So right now I’m currently in the throes of standardized-test preparation, gearing up for what I hope to be an exciting exam that will negate years of strenuous academic labor in one swift, blood-curdling blow! But I’m optimistic.

Anyhow, I ordered two Kaplan GRE books, one the comprehensive GRE practice book, the other designed solely for improving on the verbal section, to prepare for the exam and to give me an idea of what sort of thing I might expect to encounter once I take it.

One incredibly annoying thing that I soon discovered Kaplan does, perhaps unsurprisingly, is recycle their GRE sample questions. Keeping this in mind, I somehow managed to get both identical questions wrong. How, you ask, might such an embarrassing oversight on my behalf occur? I will now venture an explanation!

The GRE practice question that stumped me twice is the following one, an analogy:

SHINGLE : ROOF ::

1. rind : melon
2. armor : knight
3. feather : wing
4. patch : cloth
5. canopy : bed

The first time I took the practice test (in the general GRE book), I chose Answer #3, “feather : wing.” My reasoning was that if you strip a wing of its feathers, its naked and unprotected, just as a roof without shingles would be. Kaplan, however, disagreed. Here is what they write:

B. A shingle protects a roof. Let’s try the answer choices. A rind protects a melon. No; eliminate. Armor protects a knight. Yes; keep. A feather protects a wing. No; eliminate. A patch protects a cloth. No; eliminate. A canopy protects a bed. No; eliminate.

Fair enough, I can see their reasoning here. So, the next time I took the practice test, this time for the GRE Verbal section, I answer B, “knight : armor,“ only to find out that Kaplan is in a disagreement with itself over which is the correct answer! Here is the new explanation they provide:

Many SHINGLEs make up the outer covering of a ROOF. A melon only has one rind. Eliminate. Many armors do not make up the outer covering of a knight. Eliminate. Many feathers make up the outer covering of a wing. Keep it. (And so on).

Uh-huh. So I guess what Kaplan secretly trying to tell me is that the GRE is bullshit.