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Topic: The GRE
| Author | Message |
| joyeuxnoelle | Posted – 9/10/2007 3:34:56 PM | show profile For people applying to grad school this year. How seriously are you taking GRE preparation? It seems like someone who wants to be a professional writer should do well on the verbal section(s). Do you think it matters if we bomb on the math? |
| questoo1 | Posted – 9/10/2007 3:51:24 PM | show profile I think it matters very much. If it is between you and another applicant, and all things are equal except math score, who do you think they'll choose? |
| Astera | Posted – 9/10/2007 4:41:31 PM | show profile I had this same issue when I was applying to Northwestern back in 1998. My verbal score was near-perfect; my math score, not so much. I called the admissions office and they told me that they were most concerned with the verbal and the analytical score, and that the math score wasn't as important. I didn't blow off preparing for the GRE, but I didn't stress too much, either. I think my scores were 750 verbal, 690 analytical and 580 math, and I was accepted. Of course, it may be more competitive now. Who knows? ------ www.adventuresofastera.blogspot.com |
| writesonwater | Posted – 9/10/2007 4:43:27 PM | show profile My husband got 800 on the math. I tell our kids it's a good thing they got more his math skills and my language skills and not the other way around or they'd be morons ;) |
| seeattleme | Posted – 9/10/2007 7:55:25 PM | show profile a lot of J schools and creative writing schools don't require the GRE. Those that do only do so for fellowship purposes and/or administrative requirements they can't get around (the school insists they ask for them). Tillie Olsen, the Stanford educated poet, never even got her high school diploma. That answer your question? |
| ejlyman | Posted – 9/11/2007 8:20:50 AM | show profile | email poster Two lessons I learned I took the GRE quite a while back and did very well (good enough to get into an Ivy League grad school) and the two lessons I take from the experience when I look back from it are: 1. Be prepared! I took the test twice, once with no preparation and once after taking a prep course, reading two or three books on the subject, and talking to GRE veterans -- and the difference between the scores was amazing. I don't remember the exaxt numbers but it was something like 150 or 200 points on each part. 2. Why did I want to go to graduate school? This is a much larger issue, but years later I'm convinced I would have been better off saving that money and using those years to write. ------ Italy-based freelancer www.ericjlyman.com |
| UGoGirl | Posted – 9/11/2007 9:15:25 AM | show profile When I took it many years ago I did really well on the analytical section, well on the math section, and just OK on the verbal section. I guess I'm probably a better analyst than writer. |
| catlondon | Posted – 9/11/2007 10:42:38 AM | show profile "Tillie Olsen, the Stanford educated poet, never even got her high school diploma. That answer your question?" This is just stupid and has no bearing on the question. Tillie Olsen, a fine writer, dropped out of high school during the Great Depression, along with tons of other people, to go to work. Her work at Stanford didn't come along until 1956. It's just not the same situation. |
| seeattleme | Posted – 9/11/2007 5:23:58 PM | show profile Great writers are not necessarily well educated and many are drop puts--inlcuding Steinbeck. That's my point. So GREs don't have a fucking ton of relevance to writing. That's my argument and I'm sticking to it. Jesus Fucking Christ. Also a drop-out--and carpenter trade school at that. |
| catlondon | Posted – 9/11/2007 5:45:16 PM | show profile granitegirl: your bitterness towards higher education has been duly noted. The poster didn't ask about whether he/she needed a degree, just how much emphasis is put on a math score in the admission process. Many great writers have advanced degrees, including Annie Proulx, who has an MA and started a Ph.D, Jane Smiley M.F.A. and Ph.D, Richard Ford M.F.A., Michael Cunningham M.F.A., Jeffrey Eugenides M.F.A., Michael Chabon M.F.A., Richard Russo M.F.A. and Ph.D, Geraldine Brooks M.A., Marilynn Robinson Ph.D, and I could go on. In fact, if you look through the Pulitzer Prize winners in fiction for the last decade or so, you would be hard pressed to find a fiction winner who doesn't have an advanced degree. One of the exceptions is Cormac McCarthy, who is 74. My point is that the writing world is a very different place than it was for those who graduated high school 50 to 80 years ago. You can't walk into a newspaper at 15 and eventually become a reporter either, like in the good old days. It's sad, but there it is. The model on which you base the argument you are sticking to (and good for you BTW) is somewhat antiquated. |
| writesonwater | Posted – 9/11/2007 7:40:07 PM | show profile | email poster Ugo, your analysis should stand you in good stead. I joke about my math skills compared to my husband, but I do have great analytical skills and computation. They have helped me develop a business writing niche. The ability to look at a graph and divine important trends from it is invaluable in our line of work, I think. |
| salsera | Posted – 9/11/2007 10:35:49 PM | show profile I studied on my own for the GRE. Didn't shell out for a course or anything like that. Did well on the verbal (above 700) and not so great on the math, but I still got into some top programs and was offered fellowships at a couple. |
| catlondon | Posted – 9/11/2007 11:40:56 PM | show profile Alas, the analytical section is gone (my score was very good o that). And the other thing to remember is that GRE scores are only good for five years. Then you have to do it all over again. I think GREs are a scam, myself. |
| seeattleme | Posted – 9/12/2007 8:48:46 PM | show profile Catlondon, it's not bitterness. I have an MFA, actually-- and two fellowships. It's a simple fact. Grreat writers may or may not be highly educated. And an advanced degree won't make you a great journalist, writer, or editor. Sorry, but that's a fact. These talents come from reading, writing, and having an awareness about what's going on in communities and the world around you. Aspects generally NOT present in higher education. That is neither a new theory nor is it a new "point of view". Anyone who takes great stock in these kinds of standardized tests--which are culturally and sociologically racist and classist (not my original opinion, either)--may or may not EVER be a great writer, because stock in these kinds of classist, raqcist and sociological barriers betray a need for one to prove ones self superior to whole segments of society. Hardly beneficial to what makes great art--universal relevance. To chalk my point of fact is simplistic and I dare say, ignorant. That's not bitterness talking. It's an observation. Probably not one to your liking. |
| seeattleme | Posted – 9/12/2007 8:52:51 PM | show profile And BTW the majority of your examples are modern. So we have a difference in preference. There are few 'modern" writers I can tolerate. Except for Chabon. I grant you that. Except now that he teaches at berkeley he tells students not to get an advanced degree unless they plan to teach at a university level. And only because you need it--which you don't Ishmael Reed (winner of the National Book Award) splits his time bwtn Harvard Princeton and Berkeley and has no advanced degree (s). Go to a class of his and you'll hear it for yourself. |
| seeattleme | Posted – 9/12/2007 8:57:53 PM | show profile And the reason those with advanced degrees win Pulitzers is because it's a political award as much as any award out there. Academics awarding other academics. But a few slip through. Frank McCourt, for example. Cormac --who refuses to even SOCIALIZE with other writers, you mentioned him. Yeah, it's a small group that doesn't play the stupid little classicist elitist game and get shiny awards. (Not my original opinion, either). But a few pathetic souls get through. And in my mind, actually earn the award. Incidently, if you compare the number of Pulitzer prize winners (given by Columbia School of Journalism, GEE do we see a conflict of interest? Think CSJ would or would NOT support higher education?????) to the number of people who graduate every year with advanced degrees like MSJs and MFAs and MAs and PhDs, who NEVER USE THEM--goddamn, I'd be curious to see that number...wouldn't you???? |
| seeattleme | Posted – 9/12/2007 9:19:26 PM | show profile One final note on this whole GRE issue (and keep in mind, many MFA programs have stopped requiring GRE scores in just the last five years): Catlondon, all the writers you mention, I would need to check their ages, but it looks like those writers all got their graduate degrees in the late seventies and early eighties, when grad school was not as expensive and loans and fellowships were more plentiful. These are OLD writers. Check the prize lists ten-20 years from now and I'll bet you you will see a different crop of names, with different backgrounds and different nationalities--and not so many graduate degrees. Look at what's going ON out there. Look at the economy. Poeple are losing their homes. College costs are obscene and financial aid simply is not there for middle class families. Sure, take out a loan -- a program that's swimming in corruption. People can't afford to go to grad school, let alone shell out bucks and time better spent at a paying job for "GRE prep classes". Graduate school is a luxury for anyone but the super rich. To advise someone to go to grad school-especially a writer, who may NEVER make big bucks and may go into serious lifelong debt as a reult--is irresponsible and inadvisable, as far as I'm concerned. I think education is w -wonderful thing, but education that is so difficult to access and so self-serving in the long run (how many Columbia MFAs are teaching in Harlem or the Bronx?) needs to be rejected so that those who are running the business that has become the GREs, the SATs, and grad school programs in general will need to abandon the money-making and adjust their programs to serve the higher purposes education is SUPPOSED to serve. If that makes me bitter toward higher education despite my higher education, that's fine with me. Damn fine with me. Don't turn on me because you don't have the prescience or the courage to take these stands and say these things. That's not MY issue--that's yours. |
| seeattleme | Posted – 9/12/2007 9:32:06 PM | show profile And while i'm not certain it's ever been true that you could go into a newsroom at 15 and become a reporter (maybe in the 20s???), now at 15 or 17 you can have your own YOUTUBE PAGE AND WEB SITE, make your own films, post your own blog, jump on a friggin coach and have a writer from the NY Times write about it, get asked on the Today show, and before you know it, be asked on as a contributing writer for any one of the national magazines or newpapers. I'll bet money by 2010 they're giving out Pulitzers for blogs and web sites! It's a completely different world out there with the new media, and no one needs an advanced degree to get onthe web. All you need is a computer and an imagination. |
| catlondon | Posted – 9/13/2007 12:14:16 AM | show profile granitegirl: now that we've hijacked the thread and everyone is rolling his/her eyes, I agree with almost everything you said. In fact, there was an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education about graduate writing programs being a pyramid scheme--you have to an MFA to teach and colleges need programs so that they can employ writers, and say to their graduates, "here's how you make a living, you teach writing to others who won't make a living writing but will teach writing to others..." and on and on. That's why I didn't do an M.F.A., just a regular old English M.A. which frankly has been helpful to me. And I also think YouTube et al is great and will level the playing field in writing and electronic media. Hell, Hillary Clinton made her presidental bid annoucement on the web. That said, a university setting can be great for a writer because it affords them time to write and a community of writers. I don't know about you, but most of my office mates don't read...at all...and I spend A LOT of time in the office. Just being around people for whom it was okay to talk about the short stories of Collette or whether there was any relevance left to the theories of Foucault was like a vacation. And I only went in debt about $10,000 for it. Some people thrive in structured setting and some don't--to each his own. As for the GRE, you don't need to argue me into the thinking the Educational Testing Service is some huge con game--I know it. |
