SHEA: O magnum mysterium

Wednesday, I will relive my standardized testing nightmare and take the GRE out of pure necessity for graduate school admissions. Needless to say, I feel like there is no good way to prepare.

I do not know what the acronym GRE stands for, I have not thought about math in more than five years, and I certainly don’t know what vocabulary words such as chary and salubrious mean. This entire process is an absolute scam, and yet I am completely at its mercy if I want to pursue classics in the future.

The last standardized test I took was the SATs (again, no clue what it stands for), which was equally insulting to my time and neurons. I wasted away the precious end of my childhood studying a book about reading comprehension and algebra problems. My math scores, as expected, totally sucked, but my reading and verbal scores were decent.

I’m suspicious of the cult of the GRE, as with any standardized testing, such as the MCAS (Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System), an exam that took away about a month of my life in total thanks to uber-liberals such as Ted Kennedy and the No Child Left Behind act. Kids in our schooling system missed out on a lot of actual knowledge because instructors would teach to the MCAS exam so the district would get higher scores, and in return, increased federal or state funding.

And yet my parents didn’t send me to a good private school because they thought I’d turn into a spoiled, preppy rich girl who blew coke off her Lilly Pulitzer notebook in between classes, so I was subject to the plebeian drudgery that comes with attending even the best public high school in the county.

Unlike public school exams, however, the GRE caters to upper-class students. It is $185 to take the GRE, an amount that most college students would rather be spending on booze and pizza than a test.

Unless a person is naturally gifted, it is difficult to master all portions of the GRE without buying a $24 Princeton Review guide and taking some practice courses, which those people on the Commonwealth Avenue sidewalk always offer along with candy. I never take candy from strangers, though.

By the way, for those neurotic students who are still attached to their parents by the umbilical cord, there is an option for private tutoring. Guess how much, according to the GRE’s website, 35 hours of private tutoring costs? Guess. Maybe $400, or $1,000? Not even close.

It’s $4,599.

Four thousand, five-hundred and ninety-nine blooming dollars.

This is no longer a test based on merit and reasoning abilities, but part of a much larger profit-based scam similar to the SATs from which other parasitic companies benefit, such as Kaplan and The Princeton Review. After registering for the exam, buying a review guide and taking a couple of preparation classes, a student most likely has an empty piggy bank.

Luckily this isn’t the case for me, but if I did come from a lower-class family, my blood pressure would be skyrocketing with anxiety about how to pay for all of these things, never mind studying for the test itself.

So in my last hours before taking the three-ish hour test, I’ve decided to study with only a Princeton Review guide (they should make me their poster child at this point – in fact, I look like the girl on the cover of the 2014 edition. I plan on defacing her after the test is over). But it’s against my principles to register for any B.S. prep classes, and the Kaplan people on the sidewalk can honestly take their free candy and shove it.

I had planned on returning the book to Barnes & Noble after reading it, but the woman at the register told me this kind of product is un-returnable. If anyone has a shaky table that needs something about 1.5 inches thick under a leg, let me know.

The exam, now matter how much one prepares, is still just a big mystery. These books and classes offer helpful strategies if you are a newborn hippopotamus who doesn’t know English, such as process of elimination, so I’m feeling pretty screwed at this point.

But on the positive side, the GRE’s format is computerized so I’ll know automatically what my scores are when I’m done. This is considerate of the test-makers because I’ll begin the decorating process of my parents’ basement much sooner, as I’ll be living there after I fail and get rejected from every grad school that sees my math scores.

So if any admissions offices are reading this, please know that I am a smart girl who likes ancient Greek, Latin and ice cream, as well as Bombay and tonics, but just not so much math equations.

Sydney L. Shea is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences Ancient Greek and Latin. She can be reached at slshea@bu.edu.