Taking the GRE- for those who really really don't want to

Utter whatever curse you want about the GRE. Whatever slam you can come up with, the GRE probably deserves it.  The verbal section’s dependence on archaic vocabulary is the part I hate most.  It is one thing to test for vocabulary words that people actually, you know, use—surreptitious, taciturn, ambulatory—but then a test taker will encounter words she’s never heard before in her life—saturnine, gainsay, encomium—and be punished for her egregious sin of not knowing something that 99% of the population doesn’t know and 99.9% doesn’t care about.  If you’re the sort who cares about fairness and merit in academia, you’re probably aware that this sort of test is especially unfair to students who speak English as a second language.  Imagine that: you work for years to learn English, get a good score on the TOEFL, maybe even attend college in the US.  Then you take the GRE and because you don’t know what “peripatetic” means you might has well be tossed in a volcano. 

I exaggerate, of course.  But many would agree that the GRE is a bad test of academic ability; it is more of a test of your ability to jump through bureaucratic hoops and cough up $150.  You could protest.  You could howl and throw a tantrum and vow to only apply to schools that don’t need a GRE score or just throw in the towel and take the GMAT or LSAT instead.  You could fill with righteous anger and protest graduate schools’ dependence on a money-making racket disguised as a standardized test to judge another human being’s “potential.”   

But, at the end of it all, you will still have to take the GRE to go to grad school.

Sigh. 

I won’t spend hours going over all of the test taking strategies out there.  There is a whole industry for standardized test prep.  I recommend at least picking up a book or going to some kind of course for the GRE.  If the GRE is important to getting into grad school, and grad school is that important to your future, you should do some kind of prep.  Everyone you’re competing against for that admission will be. 

Besides reviewing the concepts tested and maybe taking a prep course, here are some rules for preparing for the GRE.

1.  Pick a date to register early.  Unlike the ACT or SAT the GRE can pretty much be taken any old time.  Because there are so many spots and you can take the test on relatively short notice it is easy to procrastinate—both to register and to actually prepare.  Don’t wind up taking the GRE two weeks before your application is due.  Pick a test date a few months out, and prepare accordingly.

2.  Find a good prep book/course.  As I said before, there are a ton out there.  A few criteria have to be met for best results.

            a.  Is the prep material current?  The GRE has gone through a lot of changes in the past few years, going from a written to a computer adaptive test, moving toward entering answe ers instead of multiple choice questions, and using “experimental” questions on test takers.  A good prep book will tell you how to prepare for each, but if it’s from 1995, it’s not going to be as helpful.

            b. Does the tone and content suit you?  Look at the book and see how it’s written.  Is it dry and instructive, or more conversational?  Go with a book that fits your personality.  It will make it easier to absorb whatever the book is trying to teach you if the book doesn't remind you of that painfully unhip teacher who always called you "dog."

            c.  Are there sample tests?  There is no better preparation for the GRE than taking the GRE.  ETS (the company that makes the GRE) releases old tests to the public after a few years.  A good prep book will incorporate those old tests and use them for diagnostic.  Even better: many books will come with a CD-ROM that will simulate the computer adapted tests.

3.  Vocabulary- Repetition is your friend.  Those ancient vocabulary words I complained about earlier?  You still have to learn them.  Again, there are lists, flashcards, books out there that will help you.  Go through the words and pick out words that you know cold.  Set them aside—you already know them.  Then go through again and pick out the words that you kinda sorta know what they mean, or have heard somewhere before.  These are what you need to memorize.  The words that you’ve never heard before, have no context to put them in, doubt that they are actually English?  Put those aside, your chances of learning them are slim to nil. 

Then take the vocab cards or list or whatever of words that you need to learn, and start memorizing.  Repetition is your friend here.  Look at the cards a few times a week, using the same words until you know exactly what it means and how to use it in a sentence. Yes, it's boring.  Yes, you still have to do it.

4. Review, Review, Review your math.  You may still remember the Pythagorean theorem.  You may still even remember how to do quadratics.  That’s great.  But can you do them under a time limit, sorting through irrelevant information, while already intellectually exhausted?  Be honest with yourself here.  If it’s been a few years since algebra and geometry, you owe it to yourself to take some sort of refresher.  Especially if you’re weak at math (like me) this will boost your ability and your confidence on test day.

5.  Check your network.  I am bad at math (so very very bad) but I am great at verbal and vocabulary questions. I have a friend who is amazing at math but struggles with the ambiguities of the verbal section.  See where we're going here? Go to your friends and ask their help, ask to study together, ask for their advice.  They're your friends, they'll be happy to help you.  Just be there to offer your help when they need you.

Also, if you're a student, check the career center.  Their whole job is is to get you a job or into grad school.  They will offer advice, test prep materials, and maybe even tutoring.  Again, a theme is emerging here: don't put it off.

In case you were wondering, I finally took the GRE, in spite of all my carrying on, this week.  I did pretty well, thanks to my own prep and an awesome assist from more math-literate friends.   Now that it's over I can swear an oath to never ever not ever take a standardized test ever again.  My wish for others is to prepare well and early, get through the GRE, and move on with their lives already.  We are all much more than a test score. 

Good luck to all!

Ambition for Admission- Preparing to Apply

So, you’ve decided to pursue a Master’s degree. You’ve decided to surrender your freedom and $60,000 for the privilege of enduring marathon classes, all-night study sessions, and cutthroat competition from your fellow students, with no guarantee that your new degree will help you get a job once you graduate.

Hooray!

Because you really, really want to earn a graduate degree and are willing to take on all of the accompanying burdens, right?

Right?

Any grad school application guide begins the same way: by attempting to dissuade you from applying. Would you be able to give up your social life for years at a time? Do you mind parting with enough cash that you could have bought a car, or maybe even a house with? The decision is harder if you’ve already started a family. Will you mind if your young children start calling the babysitter “Mommy?” If all this gives you pause, that’s good. It should.

I’ve considered these questions myself. The decision to apply was easier for me, because I have no family to traumatize with my perpetual absence and a good fifty years left on my life expectancy to pay off the debt. Because the unemployment rate is still so high, the opportunity cost (the money I could be making working instead of studying) is probably as low as it will ever be. I also am not so far from undergrad that study habits have atrophied. Plus, as we all know from the first entry in this series, it’s not like there are any other opportunities to seize on right now.

I’m ready to apply, and no doomsday prophecies will sway me. So, where to start? First, I have to make sure that my basic, universal requirements for applications are fulfilled.

1. Did I graduate from undergrad? It seems like a dumb question (“Duh, could l have all this post-grad angst without graduating?”) but schools are going to need proof of such, usually in the form of your transcript. You are going to need several copies of your transcript for even one application. Send off to your undergrad’s registrar and get a few official transcripts. Get an extra one that you can tear out of its envelope, photocopy, and use for “unofficial” purposes, such as multiple copies in the same application packages.

2. Take those standardized tests. For my purposes (international relations), I will need to take the GRE, however, other tests are often required or accepted. Business schools are usually looking for the GMAT, law school for the LSAT, and so on. The debate over standardized tests and their ability to measure academic aptitude has been debated as long as they have been in use, and I won’t spend any time rehashing the controversy here. The fact is you have to take one. Preparation can help ease anxiety and sometimes even raise your score. Companies that offer test prep books, software, and classes are Kaplan and the Princeton Review (full disclosure: I work part-time as an ACT teacher for the Princeton Review). I have yet to take the GRE officially myself; when I do I will cover preparation and test-taking strategies in a separate post.

3. Assess how much cash you are willing to part with and how much debt you are able to take on in pursuing the degree. Look at your assets, your savings, and your current debts. Take stock of the money you have RIGHT NOW—don’t be distracted by your future possible earnings, financial aid, or sudden lottery jackpots. Those are all imaginary at the moment and may never materialize. Be brutally honest with yourself. Once you have that number, write it down, stick it in a drawer, and forget about it for a while. Later in the application process, when you start receiving acceptance letters from universities (let’s pray) you can pull out that number and compare them to the schools’ tuition rate and their offered financial aid. If you come up with an accurate assessment of how much you can afford before applying, you have less chance of having stars in your eyes once the acceptance letters roll in.

4. Justify your existence. Make a list accounting for your whereabouts and occupation for past 5-10 years. For most people, this would be a resume. Be prepared to explain what you were doing, how much you earned doing it, and what skills/experience you picked up along the way. Don’t lie or even over-embellish, but put the best face forward that you can. Your grad program will want to know not only what you want to study, but what assets you will bring to the school. Your resume and work experience says a lot about your motivation, your stability, and your future potential. Be sure to account for periods of inactivity: were you traveling? Writing a novel? Taking care of your sick mother? If you don’t address these gaps, admissions committees can assume the worst.

5. Google yourself. Google your name and all nicknames/aliases/screen names you have used in the past. Do you like what you see in the results? Does your Facebook/MySpace/Twitter page come up? Do you WANT it to? Be sure that all your pages’ privacy settings only allow your friends to view them. Check for photos of yourself posted by friends that may be shared. Consider cleaning up your online presence, or better yet, keep it clean to start with. Don’t overshare or brag about your illegal activities. Even if you delete something incriminating, it could linger in archives or in other people’s files and still surface at inconvenient times. A good rule of thumb: if you would feel uncomfortable shouting out some piece of information in Time Square, in front of foreign tourists, the NYPD, people of all races, all your exes and your future spouse, your grandmother, your children, and the twitchy guy on the corner who may or may not be a serial killer, then DON’T post it online.

To build up positive results about yourself, you will have to put the content out there yourself. Consider using your website, Facebook, or Twitter to promote yourself and your accomplishments. Work for a reputation as an expert in your chosen field: review books about your field of study, write your thoughts on current events in your industry, post a portfolio of your work. Start on this early. The longer you put out positive content, the more likely it will be to outweigh anything incriminating or unflattering out there.

6. Think about who might recommend you for a grad program. Two types of references are essential: one, a professor from your undergrad to attest to your academic accomplishments; second, a work superior who has known you a while and can vouch for your work habits and enthusiasm for your chosen field. Avoid using family members (even if you’ve worked for them) and friends or work peers. Committees just aren’t going to take this type of recommendation seriously.

Also avoid falling into the trap of going for prestigious references over ones from people who really know you. For example, if you interned for Microsoft, it is better to get a personal, detailed letter from the office manager you worked with every day than a mass-produced form letter from Bill Gates. Admissions committees can spot a form letter a mile away, and you risk looking phony.

Getting good references isn’t something that you can throw together in a few days. Typically you will need to maintain a good relationship with mentors, teachers, and bosses for years. Get started early, ideally in undergrad or earlier. Don’t burn bridges or let relationships falter even after you’ve left school or a job. When you do need a reference, it will be easier to reconnect.

Grad school applications’ exact requirements will vary, but these are some basics that most all schools will require. Start pulling these materials together as soon as possible to avoid being caught up against deadlines. In coming posts, I will cover each of these points and more of the admissions process in more depth.

What preparations for grad school would you recommend? How soon should someone start preparing? Answer in the comments of the blog, on Facebook, or in LinkedIn.

Ambition for admission

My December 2008 graduation, rather than a mortarboard tossing, silly-string coated affair, was grim. The ceremony took place on a bitterly blustery grey day. Black-clad graduates herded silently to their chairs as a tinny “Pomp and Circumstance” piped in over the gym's sound system. The keynote speech drifted from the promise of youth to George Washington Carver to something about a man jumping out of a plane with a backpack full of silverware. "Are we the jumper?" I remember thinking. No one mentioned the crushing recession in progress in the world outside that wood-floored gym, the near-nil chance that many of us had of finding work in the coming months, the decades’ worth of student loan debt that we 22 year-olds now had to bear in such an environment. No one mentioned these things, but no one was reading aloud Oh, the Places You’ll Go! either.

I’m being dramatic, of course. But no more dramatic than the daily news at that time. Two months prior, the world economy had bottomed out, leaving predictions of mass unemployment, investments flatlining, a new Great Depression. Overnight we were stuck with the fallout of years of corruption and mismanagement from our elders in finances and government. Younger undergrads had years left to wait out this recession. Our slightly older peers who had graduated a few years before us had work experience to put on their resume. We were just 500 kids with liberal arts degrees. No wonder we were glum. At that ceremony my only moment of happiness came when the dean correctly pronounced my name handing me my diploma.
Without a job, my plans for moving somewhere cosmopolitan and vibrant, living alone without roommates, and laying the foundations for a career were out of the question. I moved back into my bedroom in my parents’ house, which they accommodated wonderfully but signaled to me a regression to my (shudder) high school days. I applied to hundreds of jobs, first in government and international relations, then any sort of office job, and finally jobs waiting tables and in retail. I couldn’t even get an interview. I ended up working as a waitress at a restaurant downtown. This was fine at first but as the recession continued the restaurant was so strapped that the kitchen couldn’t afford soap for the dishwasher. Management couldn't make payroll for months at a time. In the fall of this year, I decided to quit and become a “professional intern” for the International Relations Council and a local politician in hopes of gaining a little work experience and maybe a modicum of self-worth.

But these are stopgap measures. Almost one year after graduation, the economy is recovering but employment rates are not. I enjoy my work as an IRC intern but still can’t find what most would call a “real” job. Luckily I have my family to lean on, and no one to support financially as millions of other unemployed workers do. Times are tough everywhere, and we're all trying to figure out how to cope. I can manage this way for a long time. And yet, the recession and accompanying high unemployment rates will continue for years. Already, all this time spent looking for work and making do with what I can find is time that could have been invested in a career track that might allow me to become a diplomat, or a foreign service officer, or to work overseas as I wished. That time is lost, but I don’t want to spend what’s left of my youth waiting and cursing forces beyond my control.

That's why I'm trying something different this fall: I’m applying to graduate school to study international relations. I will blog here at the IRC about the application process, covering picking schools to apply to, graduate school fairs, finances, and standardized tests. Comments, questions and suggestions are welcome (I want to hear your stories!). Stay tuned for more updates on the process, and good luck to everyone out there in these tough times. --From Lucia, your friendly neighborhood IRC intern.