Original Cin

The big news that I’ve seen lately on several blogs is that fewer people are taking the GRE; I think I saw it at Marginal Revolution first. Anyway, posting at both this blog and FanCruft have been slim lately because I was studying for both a calculus exam and the GRE. I did great on both of them. Some thoughts:

• I did, in fact, get very, very discouraged by an experimental section where I had to guess at most of the answers, although I realized it was experimental about halfway through the next section. (An unlikely alternative: what I think was the experimental section was the real deal and I’m the luckiest person alive, having solved dozens of problem by guessing). Experimental sections suck.
• Studying made a huge difference. When I first took a GRE practice test, my quant score was only average. After reading about the GRE for a few months and doing a lot of practice problems, the next time I took a practice test, I got an average score for people trying to get into master’s programs in econ. My actual score on the test was above average for everyone that said they were hoping to get into a econ program. I used an ebook version of GRE Prep Course by Jeff Kolby and Scott Thornburg; I only got about halfway through the math section and only glanced at the verbal section on the book, but I’d still highly recommend it. (I’m getting my “averages” from ETS’s own PowerPrep)
• On a related note, reading about the format of the test actually helped a lot. Among other gems in the book; some types of problems on the test will yield faster to a “brute force” attempt where you plug in numbers than trying to solve them the “right” way. Since this is dangerous if you do it wrong, see the book for details.
• I decided that I wanted to go to grad school long before people were complaining about the current economic conditions. I am not easily swayed by minor, impersonal statistics in my grand plans. Maybe the fact that applications to take the GRE are down is a sign that, unusually, other people aren’t for a change either.
• Alternatively, maybe most of the people who would normally go into grad school are under the impression that GDP will increase by 10% overnight once Obama is sworn in, and the world will instantly be filled with candycanes, gumdrops, and
• On the flip side, having less competition to deal with can sometimes be a good thing, and I’m pretty sure this is one of those cases, so I like the news I’m reading about fewer people taking the GRE.