Tell me about the GRE

[Jean Louise Finch]

Hello everyone,

Have you taken the GRE? Recently? How did you study and how did you do (no scores needed -- but do you think studying helped)? Have you got any amazing resources to recommend?

I am in a bit of a crisis of trying to sort out my future life and times and part of that might just involve sitting the GRE. But I've got a very limited window and am trying to figure out if it is realistic that I'll do well after a very short period of study. I'm generally pretty good with standardized tests, but it's been quite a while and I've heard the verbal section is wretched.

Thanks in advance!
Jean Louise

[Lethe]

1. took it a couple years ago

i just got one of those study books with problems in it. Probably worked in it for about a week and then took it. I did well enough to get in to grad school, but I wish I would have studied the math problems more. If I remember right, there were a lot of word problems involving probabilities, which I didn't study much.

[VespertineIconoclast]

2. A Kaplan course may help.

Even though I didn't take the GRE, I took the MCAT instead -- Kaplan worked wonders! I have no idea if the GRE course is as costly as the MCAT course. The MCAT course was expensive, but it taught me how to think through the questions and narrow down answer choices by thinking about how the question was structured. You may not want to screw around with the GRE scores because if applying for grad. school is anything like applying for med. school, if you take the MCAT more than 3 times without getting a satisfactory score you might as well give up on applying to med. school.

I would suggest talking to a grad. school adviser and/or grad. students that are going to schools that you want to attend to get ALL of the inside tips on how to be a competitive applicant. Best of luck to you. :)

[fortyfeetunder]

3. Kind of recent enough...

I tooked the computer adaptive GRE. I used the book GRE for Dummies...and I also used the free computer adaptive drills and practiced them several times a day. I am not a good test taker and suffered anxiety on test day.

The computer adaptive tests start out with problems of moderate difficulty -- ace those and you are "adapted" into a more difficult test -- with the potential of higher final scores. However, if you miss any of the first few, the test adapts to a safer, easier test, but you can't score as high.

I was relieved it was over. I did better on math than I expected and worse on verbal than I expected.

[cwydro]

4. The reference section of your local library

should have the study/reference book on it.