I'm taking the GRE soon and was wondering if any of you out there in T-dub land have taken it recently. What were your thoughts on it? What did you do to prepare and how did you score?

Standardized tests make me

7/29/2008 2:15:22 PM

IMO, math is as easy as SAT, but the vocab is much more difficult (but then, I was never any good at it.)

I think i got 780 math and like 600 verb.

And the essays, i bombed... If I was going to take it again, that is where I would put all my efforts.

7/29/2008 2:25:17 PM

I used one of the practice books that you can pick up at Barnes & Noble.

800 Quant
620 Verbal
5.5 writing

It wasn't bad at all. Just go through one of the practice tests to get a feel for it.

7/29/2008 3:23:13 PM

^how good was your score compared to others?

is this similar to the mcat? i think aaprior took one of those recently

7/29/2008 3:30:08 PM

one of my friends recently took the gre, didn't do so well though (but shes not a good test-taker)

7/29/2008 3:37:10 PM

I took it in June. To study, I used the software that comes with it, and I spent an afternoon at Barnes and Noble reading one of the prep books. I scored pretty well with it.

7/29/2008 3:41:56 PM

Well, to prepare for the GRE I used that freerice.com website and some other websites that had free GRE vocab building questions. I didn't practice any of the quantitative stuff because the questions were pretty simple, and just a bit tricky (they just require some decent reasoning and math skills, which you'll probably have by the time you're ready to graduate college).

Make sure you do your vocab stuff well. Also, I only had about a week of prep time for the exam and didn't use a practice book. It's important to get a good night's rest before the exam and to use the break time they give you to its fullest extent (you need a bit of a mental break after the first part of the exam, the analytical writing stuff). You'll probably get a better score than you thought once you finish the exam.

I got an 800 Q, 580 V, and whatever the top score is for the analytical writing (6?).

7/29/2008 7:14:28 PM

math was very easy

verbal was very difficult if you havent been exposed to a large vocabulary...i have never thought it was something that you could just memorize, but learn through experience

the writing part wasnt too difficult but the more proficient you are at typing the better

the monitor killed me, i think i was staring at about a 30 Hz refresh rate on a CRT...halfway through the test i had to just put my head down to rest my eyes

[Edited on July 29, 2008 at 10:48 PM. Reason : 

7/29/2008 10:47:50 PM

^ Yeah I didn't like that shit either. The fact the whole test program was designed around the visual stylings of Windows Three-Point-Mofoing-One was a total mindfuck as well.

I forgot to say, it IS hard to kick your vocab score up simply by using some quick crash-course study tactics. If your vocab isn't all that hot in the first place you will really need to practice a variety of vocab-building exercises. Using freerice.com helped me a lot, I think, because of the fact that the words kept coming up over again and, after a while, I managed ti simply memorize the definition. When you have very little time to study, that's not a bad way to go.

Really though, this test is way easier to take if you just don't freak out about the fact that you're taking it and take as much time as you need to to answer the questions. Don't be afraid to skip a question and to come back and answer it later when you take it that day, as sometimes shit doesn't click after you just wrote a four page critique of some fake academic paper as a part of the exam. When you hit the vocab stuff, take your time and think it through and think through the roots. Knowing the latin prefixes, suffixes, and the root words is very helpful for determining what the correct answer is most of the time. When you have two words you've never seen before, but you can pick up the root word for one of the two answer choices you'll be able to make a much better guess.

7/29/2008 11:32:59 PM

I took it in April. I got a 710 on the math part and a 5 something on the verbal. I didn't study hardly any for the verbal part and just worked some math stuff from one of the review books you acn buy at barns and nobles. I took an online practice test before I took it too.

It wasn't real bad. verbal is alot harder than the math part. The thing about the math I didn't like was having to work everything out not having a calculator. I did ok on the essays and didn't even write one before the test.

Go get one of the review books at the bookstore and do what they say in that. The biggest thing in taking these tests is to go in with the mindset that you are going to prove to them what you know by taking the test. You are going to show-off the stuff that you know so go in there with confidence that you are going to show them what you know and they are going to like it.

7/30/2008 10:50:44 AM

I took it last year, and did absolutely nothing to prepare. I didn't even know there was a writing section.

I scored over a 1300 combined, and scored a 4 on the writing.

7/30/2008 1:42:37 PM

The test blows. I took it in Nov. 2005, so it might not even be the same anymore. I didn't prepare at all. Didn't open one book or do a single sample question.

My score was something like (estimating, I know the writing score is correct though):

620 quant.
560 qual.
5.5 writing

It was more than enough to get me where I wanted to go.

7/30/2008 9:27:30 PM

Can anyone recommend a good GRE course to review?

I took the test a few months ago, after studying for a few weeks and taking about 5 practice exams. Has anyone had test scores increase after a review course? I need to bring up my score about 100 points or more.

8/20/2008 1:36:08 PM

anyone?

8/21/2008 9:45:40 AM

I have not. I would still say that if you're decent at word problems you should be able to knock out the quantitative part of the test pretty quickly. The verbal and analysis parts require more care and concern, and I'd really just suggest learning as many words as possible by using a course/service that teaches you all these SAT/GRE words by using them in a sentence, teaching you their definitions, etc (like you did with the SAT words in high school with the vocabulary books) so that when you see them you aren't quite as lost as to what they mean.

Studying latin roots, prefixes, and suffixes will also be a BIG help for getting a rough idea of what a word means. I took latin in high school and knowing many of the root words' basic meaning helped me determine how to use that word in each part of the GRE. Really though, if you have any trouble with the quantitative parts (i.e. score <700 for the math part) you will probably find it easiest to study that. Learning hundreds of words so that you can use three of them isn't as productive a use of time as, say, studying many of the basic postulates/theorems from geometry so you can solve those conceptual problems in the quantitative section of the test.

8/21/2008 10:47:17 AM

so you can take this shit any time you want? that's crazy.

8/21/2008 11:19:15 AM

Basically, you can sign up for it next week if you want. Testing centers offer it most days of the week, just finding an open slot is the key.

So NCSU offers a 24 hour course for 560.
Prepsuccess , 42 hour course (seven straight saturdays for six hours each) for 500.
Durham Tech offers a math review course for GRE/GMAT for 70. (M/Th 3hrs for six weeks)

8/21/2008 11:42:26 AM

Quote :

"Enhance Your Employment Opportunities: Math Skills and Practice Review– $64 Are you considering taking the GRE or GMAT but feel overcome with anxiety about the math sections? Concentrating on the fundamental math concepts that appear on college entrance exams, this class covers arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and word problems. The key to improving your score on the GRE is practice, practice, and practice! This course also includes an overview of the format of these tests and test-taking techniques. Practice tests and computer-assisted tutorials are part of the instructional package. 33 hours. 7684 MTh 8/25–10/6 6–9 p.m. CEC 7683 Sat 9/6–11/22 9 a.m.–noon CEC "

Any thoughts on the difficulty and level of preparedness this class will provide?

8/21/2008 4:58:27 PM