Testing, testing, 1 2 3...

So, I took the GRE yesterday.  I was FREAKED OUT, since according to the test preparation book I used, I was doomed to miss 1/3 of the questions.  Also, I was working like a madman last week since I started at my new lab (I'll get to that later) so I had practically NO TIME to prepare.

Luckily, the test wasn't nearly as bad as I expected.  I kind of bombed the math section (well, I didn't finish it and I had to guess on a few questions) but I felt pretty good about the verbal.  I think that my main problem is that I just don't do mental math very quickly, probably because my ADD doesn't permit me to have a very structured thought pattern.  Also, I've used a calculator for pretty much everything besides simple addition since high school, so I was kind of doomed from the start.

Anyway, I got my verbal and quantitative scores right away.  I got a 670 on verbal and a 720 on quantitative (1390 cumulative).  Oddly enough, when I looked up percentile rankings, my verbal is actually MUCH higher than my math.  It corresponds to a 95th percentile ranking, while my quantitative was only equivalent to about 75.  To get above 90th percentile, apparently you have to get pretty much a perfect score on the quantitative.

Normally, these scores would be great.  One thing that I do worry about slightly is that I'm really trying to compensate for my GPA.  While these do go a short way to do that, I'm going to have to have stellar recommendations and very good applications.  I'm not going to be able to go to any top-tier schools most likely, but I think I was doomed to that when I decided not to show up to biochem.

This brings me to a bit of introspection.  I think that I have ridiculously high expectations of myself.  In my mind, if I studied for another month, I could easily get a perfect score on quantitative and possibly improve my verbal.  Because I don't fail very often unless I totally deserve it, it's really hard for me to handle scores that are merely "acceptable."  However, I think that I'm just going to have to get over myself and deal with it, since I need to be focusing on applications and I don't even know if my new scores would get to schools before application deadlines anyway.

And now the really important question.  Where do I apply?  Obviously, my best bet is a state school.  My sister Jennifer suggests Big 10 schools, and I think that I could handle that.  One of my obvious concerns is that the school needs to be in a pretty liberal, metropolitan area, since a)I'm used to Chicago and may go crazy in a small college town, and b) I need to go somewhere I feel comfortable as a gay man.  As several people have pointed out to me (not just Jennifer, who I think has slightly suspect motivations) Columbus has a sizable gay population and would be a good place, as far as the Midwest goes.  I'm actually giving Ohio State pretty serious thought, and it would be pretty cool to have a family member in the area.  (Especially one who is a professor.)  Another possibility would be picking a school based on where I want to live.  Obviously, it would be pretty cool to go to California.  My sister Elizabeth seems to think that I actually have a fighting chance of getting into CalTech.  I seriously doubt that, but it would be pretty cool if I could.  I mean, there's no harm in trying, right?

So now, my current course is to round up some recommendation letters (luckily, I now have two professors that have had me both in the classroom and in the lab) and take a serious look at programs and prospective labs to see what I'm really interested.  I most likely want to stick to some sort of genetics or cell biology, although there are some aspects of ecology and microbiology that really interest me.

Wish me luck, I guess.  Hopefully by this time next year, I'll be in a PhD program, working my ass off.