A Personal Victory

For the past year I've been working on my Ph.D. and I've been loving it! However, I've been waiting to formally apply to the program formally because some of my entry exams were not as high as they needed to be. This is fairly common at UNLV because several of the GRE (Graduate Record Exams) are pretty difficult to pass. UNLV allows students to take 12 credits before official admittance, which is what I've been doing.

UNLV has 2 test requirements: that their applicants score in the 75th percentile of higher in the GRE General Test and in the 50th percentile or higher for the GRE Literature subject test. I passed the GRE Literature test finally in March (Wahoo!); however, I barely missed the General test by scoring in the 74th percentile, basically 1 question too low.


I was bummed about this, but when I began applying a few months ago, UNLV told me that my General score was great. They said that the test company reported that I scored in the 95th percentile, not the 74th percentile I thought I had scored. I was super relieved at first, but then I got to thinking there must be something wrong with what UNLV was telling me.

So I had UNLV send me the scores, and low and behold, they were Amanda Scott from Loveland, Ohio's scores. Oh no! So then I was faced with a decision of whether or not to raise this to the UNLV's attention. I knew they would never be the wiser if I kept my mouth shut, but of course, I couldn't live with being dishonest about this score. So I told them this high score on the test (in the 95th percentile) was a different Amanda Scott's scores and they told me to hurry and retake the test.

The past two weeks I've been studying to retake this test. It is something that I would usually take a few months to study for, but because the deadline for my application is November 1, I had to act fast! I studied really hard and learned about 1200 new words. And I prayed that Heavenly Father would bless me for being honest. And boy did he ever, I took the test today and scored in the 97th percentile! Not only is this high enough to reach UNLV's requirement, but it is even higher than that other Amanda Scott's scores. I'm so relieved that my hard work has paid off and feel so blessed for Heavenly Father's help. Now I have my fingers crossed that I'm officially admitted in the next few months. Wish me luck! :)