20 June 2006

Fence sitting

MCAT (medical college admissions test) scores were available on-line today. I had heard a rumor they would be, so of course I checked. Kinda wish I hadn't but at least now I have no fear of the envelope in the mailbox. Scores on the multiple choice portions of the test were exactly where my prep work suggested they would be and I think they are in a reasonable range for admission to the schools I was looking at. Not so high as a guaranteed slot, but workable with a well-rounded application. Score on the writing section was in the toilet. As in, second lowest score type of low.

I'm on the fence because I don't know what this means for my chances of admission. Don't know whether to re-take the test in the hopes of getting a better writing score because the other sections could go up or down. Schools see all the scores from every time you take the test and each one does something different with multiple results. Waffling because the prep course I took the first time will let me re-take it for free if I'm going to re-test, but the writing was exactly the part I felt the least prepared for because there was no mechanism for feedback on the practice.

Also gets me back to waffling on the whole ordeal. Am I really willing to sell my soul to get in? Can I even make it through a hyper-competitive degree program with people nearly a decade younger than me? Can I convince an admissions committee that I have something to offer them when I'm not even sure what that something is? Can I go through another two months of studying and prep work where I don't interact with my husband? And am I really asking for four years of probably living apart from him or at best seeing him occassionally?

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