A closer look: Students say exams worth the worry
By Michael Lee
April 13, 2004 9:00 p.m.
Students preparing for graduate school admission exams may not
yet be fully aware of the road ahead, once they actually make it
past the tests.
Looking toward the future, after the endless test practice,
essay writing and anxiety of waiting can often be difficult.
But for students who have climbed the mountain and now find
themselves in UCLA graduate programs, many see the sacrifices made
in preparing applications for graduate school as entirely
worthwhile.
For Gladis Molina, a first-year student in the UCLA School of
Law, the LSAT was a major source of anxiety.
“I’m not very good at taking standardized tests
under timed conditions,” Molina said.
It was even more difficult for Molina given the fact she was an
intern for a U.S. congressman in Washington, D.C., while she was
studying for the test.
Moving to a new city a month and a half before taking the test,
she said, was a distraction she believes cost her points.
But mastering the LSAT reassured her that she was making the
right decision in applying to law school, Molina said.
The LSAT tests the processes of logical thinking that are
important to completing law school.
“I thought, “˜Wow, I’m enjoying the LSAT
““ I’ll probably enjoy law school,'” she
said.
Katy Linskey, who graduated from UCLA in 2003 with a degree in
physiological science, completed the application process last year
and is now awaiting responses from medical schools, including
UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine.
The application process, she remembers, was “like a
funnel,” a process in which schools screen applicants through
a series of steps, with each stage shrinking the applicant
pool.
The first hurdle was the MCAT, which involved a preparation
course that was like an extra four-unit class.
“The exam itself was six and a half hours, but my MCAT day
was 12 hours,” she said.
The second step, which Linskey said caused her the greatest
angst, was writing the personal statement and getting together all
the academic materials required for the standard-form American
Medical College Application Service application.
Following those steps came the secondary applications sent back
by the schools and ““ if she was lucky ““ an
interview.
She faced rejection after each of these steps, and spent a lot
of time waiting in anxiety.
“It’s overwhelming at first, and logistically a
headache,” said Linskey, who hopes to practice family
medicine or pediatrics. “But I’m accomplishing my
dream.”
For students going through the application process now, she
offered some words of advice.
“Take a lot of practice tests to prepare ““
that’s the only way you’ll learn to do well under timed
conditions,” she said.
“Make sure you have support, and don’t get
discouraged by rejection,” she added.
Jim Turner, vice chancellor of the UCLA Graduate Division, said
most students who enter graduate school find that the effort needed
to get there was worth it.
This is especially true, he said, because students in both
professional and doctoral programs gain a wide range of skills that
make them marketable in many industries.
“Undergraduate education is about the student being a
consumer of knowledge, where the skill is to give back (knowledge)
that was given to you,” Turner said.
“The idea of graduate education is to create a producer
who’ll add to the body of knowledge ““ what the
undergraduates have to know.”
