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GRE scores update

I feel like I blinked and 2016 kinda fast-forwarded to November. And it's kinda strange, but I am in a VERY excited state of mind, and I think it has to do with the holidays. Woohoo! Halloween was a blast, and I cannot wait for Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year's!!!

A couple of exciting things have happened, but one was a pretty big deal for me: I took my GRE!. Today I found out all my scores. Let's just say, based on the (lack of) time I spent studying for 2 weeks, I am genuinely surprised bc my scores were better than I expected! I'm competitive enough to qualify for all the grad programs I want to apply to once I am done with my post-bac (the main four I want to apply for are: CSUN distance program, NYU distance program, Chapman University, and Biola University) The way that the GRE works is that it's a multi-test that lasts for 4+ hours. It's EXHAUSTING. Honestly, I felt like by the end of it all I was losing my mind lol I also felt like I failed! I remember thinking, "Oh my gosh, why did I only spend 2 weeks studying? I didn't even study every day! I only did 2 practice tests. What is wrong with me? I should've waited!" But at the time, I was highly considering applying for NYU's grad program right away since their post-bac courses are within the grad program itself! I later chose not to follow through with that decision bc it's much more expensive than the other school I finally chose, and wanted to go the more cost-effective route. I even tried to reschedule my GRE date but I would've had to pay a fee and I didn't wanna do that, so I kept my date. GOSH. Well, for anyone who is interested, most of the programs I want to get into require these scores to even be considered:

Verbal: 150
Quantitative: 150
Writing: 4.0

The verbal and quantitative portions are scored between 130-170, and the writing is scored between 0 and 6, in half-point increments. The verbal and quantitative 150 scores above are within the 50th percentile, and the 4.0 writing score is "adequate" and basically proves you can critically think on two separate issues and are able to articulate your views. Some schools don't even look at the individual scores, sometimes all that matters matters is the cumulative of verbal and quantitative, which has to be at least 300. Sometimes they even say what matters for the writing score is it's at least 4.0. These were my scores:

Verbal: 157 (75th percentile)
Quantitative: 148 (31st percentile)
Writing: 5.0 (93rd percentile)

They're not the best scores, but they're not bad either! I am so relieved I got them bc I thought I did WAY worse. I don't plan on retaking the test bc I'm content with what I got. I got a slightly lower score on the math section than 150 but am hoping the higher score on verbal and writing will even it out, since those scores matter more for a program that focuses mostly on speech! Also, math is like my biggest weakness. To even reach 148 was a feat for me! The two practice tests I took were WAY lower and extremely embarrassing! I haven't taken a math class since high school, and that was TEN YEARS AGO! And there were a lot of questions with probability and statistics and I haven't even taken that class yet!

Praise God for His grace. I even prayed before I pressed the button to finish everything. I was like, "Please let me be okay if I fail and do really badly." Since I was able to see my first two scores, I was BEYOND relieved. I really am so thankful!

Now gotta try my best to do well for my post-bac, so I can also be competitive enough with my GPA! Ideally I will get into CSUN's distance program so I can stay at home with Evangeline (and hopefully, another baby in the future!) It's also the most affordable of all the grad programs I'm looking into! CSUN is $49k, Biola and Chapman are around $65k, and NYU is the most expensive at $76k!

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