I'm taking the new GRE this fall. I was wondering if anyone else has taken it or knows anything about it? What sections are added and which ones are taken out?

Discuss all new GRE related questions here.

8/9/2011 5:03:46 PM

Quote :

"knows anything about it? What sections are added and which ones are taken out?"

is this serious?

i thought you were one of those intelligent twwers... and even if not, um, http://www.gre.org ?

8/9/2011 5:42:35 PM

haha, yeah....


sometimes I like personal stories rather than... facts.

8/9/2011 8:05:28 PM

Just as the GRE website will tell you, the biggest changes (from my understanding) are:

a) that the old test would tailor questions to how you answered previous questions. In other words, the more questions you answered correctly, the more difficult the questions became and you couldn't go back to a previous question. The questions for the new GRE are fixed once the section begins and are not tailored to how well you're doing.

b) that the analogies have been replaced with more text completion questions. Some of these have multiple blanks and ask you to choose the one word for each blank that best completes the text and some of them ask you to choose 2 of six words that fit the meaning of the sentence and produce sentences that are alike.

and c) it's on a 130-170 scoring range per section instead of 200-800.

Long story short, I signed up for the GRE this summer (two years before I'm scheduled to graduate) because a friend who had inside knowledge told me the new version was going to be a lot harder. I ended up having to reschedule my testing date and take the new version. I thought it was going to be easier than the old version looking at the prep books, but it ended up being a lot more difficult than the prep books made it seem (possibly because the prep books are behind since the new version was just introduced?).

I took one of the official practice exams the night before I had to take it and they only give you a range for your score (based on the old scoring system since they won't get all the scores figured for the new scoring range until November) and I got in the 620-650 ranger for verbal (which is the score that's more important for me personally) and 780-800 for the quantitative. I was a little concerned about this since several of the grad schools I plan on applying to suggest at least a 600 verbal score, and I was cutting it close.

Morning of the test, my alarm didn't go off (which has honestly never happened with it before), I wake up 30 minutes before the start of the test and had to drive there real fast without showering or eating breakfast or having coffee or anything. Ended up getting 760-800 for the verbal, 750-800 for the quantitative. Not sure what the moral of the story is, just know that I was happily surprised that my score was that high for the verbal portion.

8/12/2011 5:42:44 PM