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The relief of being done with a test that I spent a month of hour to two hour days studying for, and significantly more on weekends, is amazing. I got through it! Not only that, I did pretty well!
When I took my first practice test, my quantitative reasoning score was 140. Since the scale is up to 170, I thought at first that that was pretty decent. Danae pointed out, though, that the scores are from 130 to 170, and that 140 was the 8th percentile. Crap.
Yesterday, after a somewhat nerve-wracking three and a half hours of testing, I scored a 154; the 57th percentile. Having looked at typical scores for admitted candidates for my programs at the Grad Cafe, that seems to be respectable. Not good enough to be outstanding, but not low enough to really hurt. Danae has told me a couple times that what I've done is essentially a crash-course in all of high-school level mathematics in the course of a month, and that she's really proud of me for how well I did. While I wish I could have done better, I agree with her. I did poorly in math in high school, and in my first attempt at college. While a lot of that was due to circumstance rather than innate ability, I had a long way to go. And on a personal level, I really feel as though I've developed a new form of literacy, and that's really satisfying.
My essays won't be scored for a couple of weeks. I'll post my scores when I get them. But for the verbal and quantitative parts, I got, respectively, 169 and 154.
169 verbal is in the 99th percentile. To be honest, that was not a surprise. I've basically always tested at the 99th percentile in that kind of thing. And hopefully that will make up for the comparatively low math skills.
Danae and Lisa and my family all deserve huge thanks for their support and encouragement while this has consumed my brain. Thank you so much!
----
Ok, so that's done. Now it's on to all the school stuff for the semester, and writing personal statements for my grad school apps. I think I really need to talk about my political and activist motivations in my statements. I've been thinking of that in light of the election, and I chose the programs I did in part because of activist or social justice interests on the part of the faculty. I need to emphasize that.
For today though, there's celebratory all you can eat sushi with Danae. (If anyone else wants to come, and can get into the Chicago area today for dinner, let me know!)
When I took my first practice test, my quantitative reasoning score was 140. Since the scale is up to 170, I thought at first that that was pretty decent. Danae pointed out, though, that the scores are from 130 to 170, and that 140 was the 8th percentile. Crap.
Yesterday, after a somewhat nerve-wracking three and a half hours of testing, I scored a 154; the 57th percentile. Having looked at typical scores for admitted candidates for my programs at the Grad Cafe, that seems to be respectable. Not good enough to be outstanding, but not low enough to really hurt. Danae has told me a couple times that what I've done is essentially a crash-course in all of high-school level mathematics in the course of a month, and that she's really proud of me for how well I did. While I wish I could have done better, I agree with her. I did poorly in math in high school, and in my first attempt at college. While a lot of that was due to circumstance rather than innate ability, I had a long way to go. And on a personal level, I really feel as though I've developed a new form of literacy, and that's really satisfying.
My essays won't be scored for a couple of weeks. I'll post my scores when I get them. But for the verbal and quantitative parts, I got, respectively, 169 and 154.
169 verbal is in the 99th percentile. To be honest, that was not a surprise. I've basically always tested at the 99th percentile in that kind of thing. And hopefully that will make up for the comparatively low math skills.
Danae and Lisa and my family all deserve huge thanks for their support and encouragement while this has consumed my brain. Thank you so much!
----
Ok, so that's done. Now it's on to all the school stuff for the semester, and writing personal statements for my grad school apps. I think I really need to talk about my political and activist motivations in my statements. I've been thinking of that in light of the election, and I chose the programs I did in part because of activist or social justice interests on the part of the faculty. I need to emphasize that.
For today though, there's celebratory all you can eat sushi with Danae. (If anyone else wants to come, and can get into the Chicago area today for dinner, let me know!)
