Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Good news, and bad news

Today I took the little half-length practice GRE (minus essay-writing) that I bought when I bought the book. Smart, I would think, to actually use what one has paid for, right?

I got about 76% of all questions right. Not bad, actually. I see 76% and think, "C, maybe a C+ if the instructor gets me," but no, things don't work quite like that. Trash might be by to comment on just what sort of score that could translate into, but I'm assuming it's "decent, not spectacular."

The fun part is the breakdown of how that 76% comes about. Out of 41 questions in the Verbal and Quantitative sections, I got 31 correct. 10 wrong, in other words.

7 of the 10 were math questions. Things like, if I remembered that the circumference of a circle is two-pi-r, I would have recognized the correct answer. Probably. Maybe. Two of the last three were super-sneaky analogies using words that (gasp!) I didn't know that well, and the final one was a total bastard rip-off word trap contained in a reading comp question. Ha ha, you got me. Oh well.

So, strategically speaking, I should pretty much just practice essays and study math. And hey, it's not like a guy needs much math to practice medicine... right? Dude, I can add, and I can multiply. What else matters? Plus all the cool drugs are one, two, or ten milligrams per kilogram anyhow. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

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