CelticBear’s Musings

So I took the GRE (Graduate Record Exam) a couple of weeks ago. It’s like the ACT or SAT for people going into grad school.
Got my scores back yesterday. *glee*
Verbal (the English stuff): 670 (94-percentile)
Quantitative (the math stuff): 610 (45-percentile)
Analytical Writing (the uh, writing stuff): 5.5 (85-percentile)

I’m quite happy! The Verbal and Quantitative range from 200 to 800. I was shooting for a 700 in the Verbal, but being in the top 6% is OK. =) It’s enough to get accepted into Princeton or Yale, and that’s nothing to sneeze at.
The Quantitative, I would have been ecstatic with a 500. I suck at math. My math score was what kept me from getting higher than a 28 on my ACT Composite. 610 is above the mean, yet 55% of GRE takers got score higher than mine. That’s weird. But I’m quite pleased with it.
The Analytical Writing goes from 0 to 6 in .5 increments, so a 5.5 is great. I was hoping for a 5 or better, but would have accepted a 4. I wouldn’t have imagined I’d have done poorly in the writing section since the tasks were basically to blog about a couple of topics. *wink*

The GRE was my saving grace for getting into grad school. See, back when I got my BA’s, I went through on a Theatre full-ride scholarship, so I put all of my focus and energy into the Theatre. (Much to the chagrin of my new wife.) So I did MUCH worse in my English degree classes than I would have liked. Which is ironic since I’d been more passionate about literature and writing since as long as I can remember, and theatre only since Jr. High. But, when they’re paying for my entire college education, you have to set your priorities.

So even though I have a 3.8 GPA (out of 4) in my Theatre Major, my English GPA was, well, I won’t say. So I knew I had to do well on the GRE to likely convince the English Department admissions persons that I would be worth it. Well, hopefully. They still have yet to decide to accept me or not. I’m putting my cart before the horse.

Oh, in case it wasn’t obvious, yes I’m planning on getting my MFA in English. Creative Writing, to be exact. Like I said, I’d always been passionate about books and writing since I was a kid. I was one of those weirdos who actually enjoyed reading the assigned books in school English classes (while still always reading something else under my desk during class, of course.)

So wish me luck. If they accept me, I’ll be taking two night classes a semester and maybe I can get my Ph.D. by 2020.