Wednesday, September 9, 2009

a brief interlude from peace corps stories

Advise me on my grad school/GRE dilemma, blog readers!

The gist of the dilemma is: Waaah I'm lazy and I don't want to take the GRE. Should I suck it up and do it anyway?

The deets: I am applying for library/information science masters programs. My top two schools, U of Illinois & U Wisconsin (Madison) do not require the GRE. U Iowa and U Washington, which are my... third and fourth choices I guess, DO require the GRE. U ILL says a good GRE score can help an application. U Wisconsin doesn't consider the GRE (right on).

It is possible to take the GRE in the DR, but it's kind of a pain. And expensive. And also I don't want to study for it.

I think I am probably already a pretty good applicant without the GRE. I also think if I suck it up and study I could probably get a pretty good score normally. I have also been having these anxiety problems lately so maybe I would actually just tweak out about it too much. I'm not sure.

Also, if I don't take the GRE it looks like I'm only going to apply to two grad schools. Is that okay? I don't want to flip out and apply to a billion schools or anything, but should I apply to more?

Any input would be appreciated!

2 comments:

Elizabeth said...

Is there such a thing as "early decision" for library science masters, like they process your application early? If so, and your top choices don't care much/don't consider it, I would say don't bother taking it. Otherwise I think I would. I agonized over whether to take the LSAT a second time to help get into my top (and honestly ONLY) choice school, and though it sucked and was expensive, I'm very glad I did it. Also, I don't know anything about library science masters programs and how competitive they are, but with so many more people looking to go to grad school out of college what with the crappy job market, anything you can do to help your app would be a plus.

More importantly, how is it going in the DR? And most importantly, will LUNA NUEVA be released there the same date as in the states?

Anonymous said...

Take it.
It's not that bad and you would probably only need to study for the math part which is kind of a pain. I studied a little and still did fine. Check what the GRE score requirement is, and remember that you don't have to send the score to the school.