Roll The Credits

So I took the test yes­ter­day. It went pretty well.

I took a diag­nos­tic before I started study­ing, and got 650 on ver­bal and 510 on quan­ti­ta­tive. My low math score was influ­enced by fact that I didn’t have scratch paper handy. Yes­ter­day, I got 710 on ver­bal and 800 on quan­ti­ta­tive. The ana­lyt­i­cal writ­ing por­tion is what wor­ried me most about the test, though. I’ve never been a very good writer, espe­cially when it’s for some arbi­trary prompt. For those of you who aren’t famil­iar with the GREs, the writ­ing por­tion has two essays. First, you get to choose one of two topic state­ments and have forty-​five min­utes to either defend, rebut, or qual­ify it. Then, you are given a para­graph of an argu­ment and have thirty min­utes to ana­lyze it for flaws with­out express­ing your own views on the topic.

For the first essay, my essay options were, “A good politi­cian should always tell the truth,” or “Social norms and ethics are not merely influ­enced, but deter­mined, by tech­no­log­i­cal progress.” I chose the first and argued against it, say­ing that although hon­esty is good, com­plete hon­esty in our lead­ers may be harm­ful. It wasn’t very well fleshed out, and my intro­duc­tion and con­clu­sion were weak.

For the sec­ond essay, though, the prompt was a fic­tional op-​ed piece about how sugar cane farm­ers should con­vert to peanuts, and I picked the claims apart pretty well. Again, my intro­duc­tion and con­clu­sion were weak, though.

I get my scores back for the essay por­tion in about three weeks. Until then, I’m cross­ing my fin­gers, but breath­ing a lit­tle eas­ier. I get a nice lit­tle break before putting nose back to the grind­stone for LSAT prep. Yay!

Tags: Law