Prepare yourselves for the dumbest thing you've ever heard:
As I mentioned in a previous post, Nana and I are taking the GRE here in Korea. Now, if you've been following our blog, you know that just about everything we try to do in this country goes horribly, comically wrong. The GRE so far has been no exception: between our first round of admissions ticket snafus and our disastrous dry run (it took us 90 minutes to find the testing center after we got off the subway), it'll be a minor miracle if we even get to take the test at all.
To be fair, though, many of our continuing problems with the GRE have nothing to do with Korea--and everything to do with the combination of byzantine registration procedures and abysmal customer service at ETS, the company that administers the GRE. First of all, the GRE registration forms don't make it clear that your admissions ticket (the original copy of which is required for admission to the exam) will be sent to whatever you list as your permanent address. In other words, if you're an expat with legal residence back home, you're stuck--your admissions ticket is going to be mailed to the other side of the world, no matter where you're hoping to take the test.
ETS does, however, offer a version of the admissions ticket that can be printed online--but this ticket apparently doesn't work for the split-administration test. At least, I haven't been able to get it to work.
A few weeks ago, then, I decided to contact customer service at ETS to see if there was any way to have the tickets mailed to our current address in Korea. The result? After no fewer than six e-mail exchanges (I turned to e-mail after being put on hold for thirty minutes when I tried to call), four of which elicited the exact same ineffectual reply from ETS, the problem still isn't solved: our parents have had to mail us the admissions tickets, and we're left hoping desperately that they get here in time.
Honestly, the ETS responses to my questions read like some kind of Kafkaesque farce. One exchange even included the exact lines below:
Me: As suggested in a previous e-mail from ETS, I have tried accessing the online admissions ticket, but I can't get access to the site (http://www.ets.org/gre/viewprintticket).
ETS: You can view and print your ticket at http://www.ets.org/gre/viewprintticket.
Then, these EXACT SAME SENTENCES were repeated in the following exchange. (No joke!)
Finally, then, in the sixth exchange, the ETS folks seem to have given up, telling me that I could print the e-mail they sent me and use it as my admissions ticket--even though when Paul (our hero) talked to the test center they categorically refused to honor anything but the original admissions ticket.
Long story short: our entire hopes for applying to US graduate schools for 2009 depend, not on our test scores, not on our GPAs, not on our recommendations, and not on our personal statements, but on the ability of the notoriously whimsical Korean postal service to get us our admissions tickets by October 25th.
Ugh.
Showing posts with label gre. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gre. Show all posts
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Taking the GRE in Korea
As you may have gathered, Nana and I are in the process of applying to grad school this fall. Considering that some people, especially those applying to top programs in their fields, take an entire year off to prepare for the GRE General Test (and, if necessary, one of the Subject Tests) and apply to grad school, the fact that Nana and I are trying to do the same while teaching more than full-time certainly isn't making our lives easy these days. Add in all the extra frustrations of trying to file paper applications from a foreign country (more on that later, probably), and you've got yourself one heck of a fall semester. So far, we're surviving, though, and the practice tests we've taken give us reason to hope all will be well.
Anyway: the GRE in Korea. In China, Korea, and Taiwan, the GRE General Test is not offered in its usual, computer-based format, but in a "split-administration" format. In this format, you take a computer-based version of the Analytical Writing section, then several weeks later, a paper-based version of the Verbal and Quantitative sections. (If it helps, you can think of the GRE as the SAT for grad students.)
This format has several advantages: First and foremost, you get to take a paper-based version of the test. This is an enormous advantage because it allows you to skip questions you're unsure of and come back to them later, time permitting. In the computer-based version of the test, you can't skip questions. What's worse, on the computer-based test, any skipped or wrong question in the early portion of the test has a disproportionate effect on your score, because any time you fail to get the right answer, you're bumped down and given easier questions (which are worse fewer points). This hugely increases the penalty for leaving questions blank: whereas on the paper-based test, a non-response simply gives you no credit for the question (and an incorrect response gives you no credit plus a .25-point penalty), on the computer-based test, a non-response early in the test can lower your overall score drastically. This means that, on average, savvy test-takers should score a few points higher on the paper-based test.
The second advantage to taking the GRE in Korea is that you get to take the test on two separate days. One of the most difficult things about the GRE is keeping focus through the whole enormous test. By taking the Analytical Writing portion early (this week, for us) and the rest of the test a few weeks later, you effectively halve the length of any one testing session.
However, there are also some disadvantages: When you take the split-administration version of the GRE, your scores aren't available until mid-December at the earliest, which is after the application deadline for most liberal-arts programs at most schools. Many schools are flexible about receiving GRE scores by the deadline, as long as the rest of the application is done, Some schools, however, make a huge number of their admissions decisions in the first two weeks of December, and for other schools, late receipt of GRE scores puts your application at the back of the line. In other words, for those schools, even though you're technically allowed to submit GRE after the application deadline, most of the admission letters have already been written by the time your application is considered. I personally have cut 3-4 US schools from my list for application this year simply because my late GRE scores will push my odds of acceptance from astronomically low to astronomically lower. (On the plus side, these GRE scores will still be current for next year's applications.)
A second disadvantage of taking the test in Korea is the fact that testing centers are few and far between. In any sizeable city or university town in the US, the nearest test center is rarely more than 15-20 minutes away. From our home in Nowon, the most densely populated district of one of the most densely populated cities in the world, the nearest test center is more than one hour away, in downtown Seoul. Of course, the longer the ride to the test center, the greater the potential for diaster . . . and you only get one shot at the test in Korea, or else you have to wait six months for the next test date.
All told, though, I'm glad we're taking the test here--for me, the advantage of taking the paper-based test far outweighs the disadvantages.
I'm not happy, though, about trying to send applications to the other side of the world . . . or about having to take the infamously brutal Subject Test in English Literature. 170 minutes of minutiae, no breaks, questions on just about any moderately important book ever written in English, ever. Ick.
Anyway: the GRE in Korea. In China, Korea, and Taiwan, the GRE General Test is not offered in its usual, computer-based format, but in a "split-administration" format. In this format, you take a computer-based version of the Analytical Writing section, then several weeks later, a paper-based version of the Verbal and Quantitative sections. (If it helps, you can think of the GRE as the SAT for grad students.)
This format has several advantages: First and foremost, you get to take a paper-based version of the test. This is an enormous advantage because it allows you to skip questions you're unsure of and come back to them later, time permitting. In the computer-based version of the test, you can't skip questions. What's worse, on the computer-based test, any skipped or wrong question in the early portion of the test has a disproportionate effect on your score, because any time you fail to get the right answer, you're bumped down and given easier questions (which are worse fewer points). This hugely increases the penalty for leaving questions blank: whereas on the paper-based test, a non-response simply gives you no credit for the question (and an incorrect response gives you no credit plus a .25-point penalty), on the computer-based test, a non-response early in the test can lower your overall score drastically. This means that, on average, savvy test-takers should score a few points higher on the paper-based test.
The second advantage to taking the GRE in Korea is that you get to take the test on two separate days. One of the most difficult things about the GRE is keeping focus through the whole enormous test. By taking the Analytical Writing portion early (this week, for us) and the rest of the test a few weeks later, you effectively halve the length of any one testing session.
However, there are also some disadvantages: When you take the split-administration version of the GRE, your scores aren't available until mid-December at the earliest, which is after the application deadline for most liberal-arts programs at most schools. Many schools are flexible about receiving GRE scores by the deadline, as long as the rest of the application is done, Some schools, however, make a huge number of their admissions decisions in the first two weeks of December, and for other schools, late receipt of GRE scores puts your application at the back of the line. In other words, for those schools, even though you're technically allowed to submit GRE after the application deadline, most of the admission letters have already been written by the time your application is considered. I personally have cut 3-4 US schools from my list for application this year simply because my late GRE scores will push my odds of acceptance from astronomically low to astronomically lower. (On the plus side, these GRE scores will still be current for next year's applications.)
A second disadvantage of taking the test in Korea is the fact that testing centers are few and far between. In any sizeable city or university town in the US, the nearest test center is rarely more than 15-20 minutes away. From our home in Nowon, the most densely populated district of one of the most densely populated cities in the world, the nearest test center is more than one hour away, in downtown Seoul. Of course, the longer the ride to the test center, the greater the potential for diaster . . . and you only get one shot at the test in Korea, or else you have to wait six months for the next test date.
All told, though, I'm glad we're taking the test here--for me, the advantage of taking the paper-based test far outweighs the disadvantages.
I'm not happy, though, about trying to send applications to the other side of the world . . . or about having to take the infamously brutal Subject Test in English Literature. 170 minutes of minutiae, no breaks, questions on just about any moderately important book ever written in English, ever. Ick.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)