I'm studying for the GRE right now and the part I hate the most is the written portion. You would think that as a Writing Consultant I would breeze through it, but nope. I hate essay tests and I hate practicing for them. For me, writing essays is a long and thoughtful process. Standardized writing tests, like on the GRE, SAT, and ACT, don't allow me to achieve a truly finished product. I am just glad that the schools I am applying to take writing samples into consideration.

Here is what I was thinking though. How can the WC help students prepare for the writing portion of the GRE? Is that even our job? I'm not sure if it is our job, but I do think that a lot of students would be interested in the help. I think a workshop about GRE writing would be a good workshop to run along with the Personal Statements workshop. Are their any other graduate school tests that require a writing portion? We could probably make the workshop generally geared towards all of them.

I think it would be neat if we actually had a practice GRE writing section and then set up peer review amongst the group or let them schedule appointments with consultants to review what they had written at the practice session.