just finished GRE

[Fayd]

yes, yes, blog.anandtech.com is that way --->

590 verbal
750 quantitative

(comes the influx of people with 800 quant and verbal...)

i'm happy. the program i'm applying to requires a combined score of 950, so i'm good there at least >_<

 

[TecHNooB]

i have to take the gre in a month. only cramming for verbal (aka memorizing vocab).

the verbal section is bullshit btw.

 

[Brainonska511]

i'm happy. the program i'm applying to requires a combined score of 950, so i'm good there at least >_<

What kind of program are you looking at?

 

[Malak]

I don't know what the GRE is. I don't take tests.

 

[Fayd]

What kind of program are you looking at?

MS in statistics at san diego state.

 

[Brainonska511]

I don't know what the GRE is. I don't take tests.

link

 

[Fayd]

i have to take the gre in a month. only cramming for verbal (aka memorizing vocab).

the verbal section is bullshit btw.

yeah, that was some serious BS. it was wayyyy harder than i was expecting, and the quant was some bit easier than i was expecting.

good luck on yours.

 

[Malak]

link

Pretty sure I'd fail the writing portion. Analyzing is easy, verbalizing...

 

[datalink7]

I basically just found out I have to take it in a month. A little nervous as I've never taken it before. Just started studying. I need 600 in each category to be competitive.

 

[manlymatt83]

Congrats!

 

[zinfamous]

Pretty sure I'd fail the writing portion. Analyzing is easy, verbalizing...

no one reads the writing ..."sample" it's a new pos section that replaced the logic section. admissions boards only skim it to make sure you aren't a drooling moron.

the problem is, graders have to read each one, so that ends up being about 1 minute per sample, for them to read and evaluate on a 7 point scale. The funny thing--they looked at scores and reasoning for a pile of samples, and the most consistent thing they found out of all of the samples, is that the longer samples scored higher.

that's it. length. BS away with proper grammar and you're good to go.

the sad thing about replacing the logic section is that it was the only challenging section. It's inclusion also made GRE scores admissible for the various Genius clubs, and such. Score 1400 or above on the GRE (pre-writing), and you qualified for MENSA.
haha.

 

[zinfamous]

I basically just found out I have to take it in a month. A little nervous as I've never taken it before. Just started studying. I need 600 in each category to be competitive.

the math is pretty simple. It's no worse than HS geometry, but you really need to refresh yourself on all the quick tricks. Honestly, must high school sophomores should be able to ace it with little trouble, it's just how much you forget by the time you come around to taking it.

for verbal, learn your latin roots and prefixes/suffixes. flash cards is the best way to go. those analogies can be tough. With tests like this, it's learning how to take it more than it is about the actual knowledge.

I found the Princeton Review books to be quite useful. Good practice and training, plus an appropriately cynical take on the entire test-making industry of ACS.

 

[MovingTarget]

I made a 550 Verbal, 770 Quantitative, with a 5.5/6 on the writing portion. This was back in 2006 though, so it won't be valid for much longer. I really should have studied more for the verbal.

 

[Bibble]

I took the GRE last summer. The math was easy once I remembered all of the stuff I had learned in high school. The verbal, however, was a pain in the butt. I had a stack of index cards 3 inches thick to study vocab. Maybe 3 of those words were on the actual test. A couple of my friends managed to score 660-710 on their test in that section, and I think only the top 3&#37; or so get above 700.

Moral of the story: read less ATOT and pick up some academic journals.

 

[acheron]

I took it about a year and a half ago: 690 V, 760 Q, 4.5 W. Not sure why the writing was so low, but I don't think anyone looks at that score anyway. Since theoretically I have a degree in writing, you'd think I'd do better on that, but standardized writing tests are mostly BS. (Exercise left to the reader as to whether I'd take them more seriously if I did better on them. Probably not though; beyond a certain point I don't take most standardized tests seriously, even though I do well.)

V is much harder than Q. My 690 V was good for 96th percentile, while the 760 in Q was only 86th. I don't think I got back what questions I missed or anything, but it was probably something stupid on Q, since it wasn't like there was anything there I didn't know. As others said, the Q is no more than high school Algebra 2, the only thing about it is remembering all the details 10 years later and not making stupid mistakes. V is a lot of random vocabulary; I'm not sure what it really proves other than how good you are at standardized tests.

I've always done really well at standardized tests (save writing, I guess), but as far as I can tell it never translated into anything else. I absolutely rocked the ACT, but my grades in HS were just decent, not great. (Frankly I'm pretty sure I only got into the college I applied to on the strength of my ACT score: it was a selective school, and most probably a ~3.5 GPA from a bad-to-mediocre high school would not have done it.)

My grades in college started out pretty bad to the point where I was close to dropping out; eventually I shaped up though, and my jr and sr years were much better. (Any correlation with me getting a girlfriend at that time is probably not coincidental.)

/blog.anandtech.com

 

[Leros]

I took the GRE last year. The math was super easy (I'm a EE) and the verbal was somewhat difficult for me. I got an 800 math and a 530 verbal. I got a 5 on the writing, which was higher than I expected.

I talked to some of the graduate admission committee members. They said they look for a near perfect math score (if you can't get at least a 750, you're a moron for engineering standards) and they don't care about the verbal or writing since most students are foreign anyway.

Basically, the GRE is useless and they only take it into consideration if you do very poorly.

 

[TecHNooB]

I took the GRE last year. The math was super easy (I'm a EE) and the verbal was somewhat difficult for me. I got an 800 math and a 530 verbal. I got a 5 on the writing, which was higher than I expected.

I talked to some of the graduate admission committee members. They said they look for a near perfect math score (if you can't get at least a 750, you're a moron for engineering standards) and they don't care about the verbal or writing since most students are foreign anyway.

Basically, the GRE is useless and they only take it into consideration if you do very poorly.

one of my professors told me that because most people don't care about the verbal section, you might as well try to do well on it to stand out a bit. she certainly takes verbal scores into consideration since most applicants have near perfect or perfect math scores.

i'm currently making an attempt to break 700 on the verbal just to see if i can (my study methods have improved after college ). however, i've noticed one thing. back in HS, when I didn't recognize a majority of the vocabulary, i would use all sorts of test taking strategies combined with "feeling out the answer" to get a decent score (SAT verbal ~ 600 range). Nowadays, I know a vast majority of the vocab, but when I approach a question, I either know the answer (because i know the definition of the words in the question) or I don't (and have little hope of extracting one). What makes it sick is that i consistently don't know the definitions for the last 3-4 questions (antonyms) so I automatically get ~3 wrong plus legitimate mistakes on every section (38 questions).

 

[Leros]

one of my professors told me that because most people don't care about the verbal section, you might as well try to do well on it to stand out a bit. she certainly takes verbal scores into consideration since most applicants have near perfect or perfect math scores.

i'm currently making an attempt to break 700 on the verbal just to see if i can (my study methods have improved after college ). however, i've noticed one thing. back in HS, when I didn't recognize a majority of the vocabulary, i would use all sorts of test taking strategies combined with "feeling out the answer" to get a decent score (SAT verbal ~ 600 range). Nowadays, I know a vast majority of the vocab, but when I approach a question, I either know the answer (because i know the definition of the words in the question) or I don't (and have little hope of extracting one). What makes it sick is that i consistently don't know the definitions for the last 3-4 questions (antonyms) so I automatically get ~3 wrong plus legitimate mistakes on every section (38 questions).

I didn't do so great on the Verbal part of the SAT (550 or so), so I took a prep course offered by an English teacher at another high school.

She taught us how to answer the verbal portion of the SAT without even reading the question. By just analyzing the answers and looking for patterns, you could deduce which one was the right answer. I made a 780 with that method.

 

[TecHNooB]

I didn't do so great on the Verbal part of the SAT (550 or so), so I took a prep course offered by an English teacher at another high school.

She taught us how to answer the verbal portion of the SAT without even reading the question. By just analyzing the answers and looking for patterns, you could deduce which one was the right answer. I made a 780 with that method.

D:I'll pretend i didn't read this.