Well it has been a very long time since I last took maths in university. In fact, I haven't touched maths in almost 5 years (certainly not at work!) and it appears to be quite rusty.

It's my wish to take the GRE and eventually get into graduate school, I've recently taken the "Barron's New GRE" diagnostic test found in their book and scored according to their rough scale:

Quantitative: 150
Verbal Reasoning: 144

Yes I've always sucked at English and not ashamed to admit it..online at least :P

These scores are embarrassing to say the least.

There's three more months left until I officially take the GRE and will do my best to prepare for it and try to double my scores. Here's hoping...

I have not done yet taken the official ETS "GRE PowerPrep II" diagnostic test...perhaps I should - the score would be different and would give me a better estimate of where I currently stand and I can compare it to the one scored in the Barrons test.

How much will my scores improve one month from now? Let's find out.

Challenge Accepted!

Argument Analysis

The editorial piece written by the author suggests that the the author believes raising local taxes in Bayside Sentinel will have a direct positive impact on the performance of the youth.

One reason being the author implies that due to the fact that the schools are run down, have broken windows, bathrooms being unusable and the out-of-date classroom equipment these are bringing down the performance of the youths.

The author's assumption that broken windows can have a negative influence on the students performance is flawed, that has nothing to do with their ability to perform.

In contrast to Bayside Sentinel in the city of New Harbor, the author is suggesting that due to their higher monetary investment on their students, 27% greater than Bayside Sentinels', and also due to that their schools are in better condition, that these have a direct impact on the performance of its students.

The author's argument is flawed, he does not consider the possibility that perhaps Bayside Sentinel does not have the same kind of society as New Harbour with different moral ethics and backgrounds.

For instance, some suburbs are more safe than others, raising taxes on the under performing suburbs will not necessarily improve the grades of the students living in those areas. The same logic can be applied here.

It's all to do with the mindset of the student, if the student wants to learn and come up in life then he or she will, regardless of the circumstances, do their best to do well at school.

Though Bayside Sentinel does not have up to date equipment that's still not a strong enough argument to correlate it with student performance. The older generation did not have computers or calculators, they studied on pencil and paper only and did arithmetic in their head, unlike the current generation. However most of these people were still able to do well in their life.

The author does not mention what other indicators of performance that New Harbour provides that can be correlated with the higher performance level of their students. The only weapon the author has is the higher rate of monetary investment in the student and the better condition of their schools.

Coming back to the previous argument, if the student wants to learn regardless of the circumstances, he or she will. Even if more monetary investment was provided to the students there is no guarantee that they will do well if they are not good students.

From the article it appears that the author is using general statistics to make the correlation, there would be certain percentage of students that surely are doing quite well in Bayside Sentinel however due to the larger amount of students that might not being doing as well - this minority would not be well represented. Likewise with new Harbour, there surely will be the odd percentage of students that regardless of the increased monetary investment won't be doing well.

The author's keyword is "stronger," however the author does not mention how much more stronger the performance of the students are. This marked increase in performance could only be by a few percentage points, hardly anything to brag about due to the increased monetary investment.

Time taken: 30 minutes

Analytic Writing Task:
We venerate loyalty - to our schools, employers, institutions,  friends - as a virtue. Loyalty, honesty, can be at least as detrimental an influence as it can be a beneficial one.

We as humans consciously venerate loyalty to the entities that we believe are good for us and our society. It's part of our nature. However loyalty can either be good, or bad, depending upon if the entity that we deem to be worthy or loyalty is under fire.

Schools are places of knowledge, learning and a time of building friendships. Our loyalty to our schools is gauged with how we respect the school property, our teachers and the ethics that the schools instills in us, as its students. Loyalty to our schools can also be measured as if we were to recommend the school to others who may be willing to enroll.

These buildings lay the bricks to the success of our future, if it's a good school that helps us achieve what we eventually want to in life: get a job, get settled, marriage and perhaps even kids it's our schools that, in its own way, allow all of these things become possible.

So in this way, it can be said that we do venerate loyalty to our schools.

We are loyal to our employers when our short, medium and long term goals align with the interests of the employer. For instance, if our employer is involved in food production we have a sense of pride, that our work, and eventually our token of prize - the food item - will be on a store's shelf for sale..and one day we can say "I was a part of it!"

However, though loyalty to our employers is marked with trust and a series of give and take it must be remembered that this relationship can sometimes, in the worse instances, be detrimental to our life's.

For instance, if the employer was involved in poor food handling as well as health and safety practices this not only will have a negative influence on the company but also on ourselves. Because we, as its' employees are ultimately responsibly  either directly or indirectly to have responsibility that the quality of the products we make, in this case, food items, are prepared to the strictest health and safety requirements.

If as its employees, one day, we decide to move to a competitors company, having a black mark on our history having been related to the company. Furthermore, if our history is joined with the department that was responsible for the health scares, it would be difficult to land a new job. Thus, in this way our loyalty to our company can in certain cases, become our downfall.

Friends are an important part of our life's, it's said that we associate people who are at the same maturity levels to oneself. Friends make our life feel whole, and some friends will be with us for life, as family. Friendship is a relationship that is built from time and trust and as such, it is valued by us like a jewel.

However in some cases certain friendships can have negative influences on our life. These types of "friends" will not hesitate to instill their negative values and energies onto oneself.

For example, taking drugs due to peer pressure. In this unfortunate scenario a person's friends are responsible for the person becoming a drug addict, and the other institutions that we hold so dearly as to help forge our future, that is, schools, cannot entirely help us find our way back.

In conclusion, we must be loyal to our friends, employers, institutions and everything else we hold dear with a virtue, only if they help us positively grow in life, not be the reason for our failure.

Finished in 30 minutes.