Scoring in GRE

[chervelle]

How to score well in GRE?
What are the books/materials u used?
i picked up princeton cracking gre and kaplan gre exam, but find them insufficient.

i thinking of getting GREbible... not sure if it is good. saw many reviews on it...

any one care to share? what score did u get?

 

[alain]

How to score well in GRE?
What are the books/materials u used?
i picked up princeton cracking gre and kaplan gre exam, but find them insufficient.

i thinking of getting GREbible... not sure if it is good. saw many reviews on it...

any one care to share? what score did u get?

Different people have different techniques. For example I did a lot of practice exams. If you have two books and you find them insufficient, just get more books. All of them are more or less the same.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

I took it way back in 2004 after my undergrad when I applied to grad schools. I used only that Princeton Review book. The problem sets in the book look pretty simple to me so I only spent a week or so. As a result of my ignorance, I got 790 Q. Probably I didn't do enough practice tests to manage the time well. Maybe I should get a different book or do more practice test. I thought my score is good enough so i didn't retake it.

You can get 800 easily if you spend a bit more time. It's a problem for those out of school for a long time but if you take the exam while taking math courses, it's not that tough.

 

[Yuriy]

Search for practice exams online and in book stores the more problems you do, the better.

 

[alain]

Probably I didn't do enough practice tests to manage the time well.

This is very important. I remember when I took the GRE, the time killed me and I had to rush through some of the problems.

 

[sleepysentinel]

Not sure which section your looking to score well in (although presumably its Math), but I found the Barron's Guide to GRE extremely effective. I did the practice tests in the book and found them up to the mark. Their wordlist is also extremely good, and its all that I did for VA.

Another aspect you should pay close attention to are which practice tests you take.

My scores for Kaplan were 1390, Princeton Review 1480, and in the offical GRE PowerPrep software tests - 1550 and 1600. I took all of them with the same level of preparation, and my score on the actual GRE was 1590 (790 VA).

My advice would be to steer clear of the Kaplan tests. Their level of difficulty is absurd (atleast in VA).

 

[Yuriy]

This is very important. I remember when I took the GRE, the time killed me and I had to rush through some of the problems.

As I like to say, given enough time, almost everyone can get 800 on Quant GRE So it becomes more of a test of how fast you can do the problems, and I don't think it is a test of mathematical abilities. It is definitely not an indicator of how well you can do PDEs in grad school but maybe an indicator of how you can work under pressure.

 

[bustweiser]

As I like to say, given enough time, almost everyone can get 800 on Quant GRE So it becomes more of a test of how fast you can do the problems, and I don't think it is a test of mathematical abilities. It is definitely not an indicator of how well you can do PDEs in grad school but maybe an indicator of how you can work under pressure.

Interesting you said that. But ETS claims that GRE tests the intellectual ability. Time is not that much of a factor. Take a look at this report

http://www.ets.org/portal/site/ets/...nnel=961246f1674f4010VgnVCM10000022f95190RCRD

They say the effect of more time is minimal. Something like an average of 7 points improvement. I dont remember how much extra time was given for this particular study (I read it some time back). However, even only 5 minutes can make a difference in my experience. Just another reason I think GRE is a big croc, a seriously flawed tool used by lazy adcoms who want to filter out people, and obviously a cash cow for ETS. Graduate adcoms should just make GRE subject mandatory if they really need a uniform way to compare people from different institutions.

 

[Vic_Siqiao]

Interesting you said that. But ETS claims that GRE tests the intellectual ability. Time is not that much of a factor. Take a look at this report

http://www.ets.org/portal/site/ets/...nnel=961246f1674f4010VgnVCM10000022f95190RCRD

They say the effect of more time is minimal. Something like an average of 7 points improvement. I dont remember how much extra time was given for this particular study (I read it some time back). However, even only 5 minutes can make a difference in my experience. Just another reason I think GRE is a big croc, a seriously flawed tool used by lazy adcoms who want to filter out people, and obviously a cash cow for ETS. Graduate adcoms should just make GRE subject mandatory if they really need a uniform way to compare people from different institutions.

we should not believe in ETS that much cos its a commercial rather than an education organization. they hope every creature on this plannet is gonna have to take GRE/TOFEL:D

 

[Yuriy]

Interesting you said that. But ETS claims that GRE tests the intellectual ability. Time is not that much of a factor. Take a look at this report

http://www.ets.org/portal/site/ets/...nnel=961246f1674f4010VgnVCM10000022f95190RCRD

They say the effect of more time is minimal. Something like an average of 7 points improvement. I dont remember how much extra time was given for this particular study (I read it some time back). However, even only 5 minutes can make a difference in my experience. Just another reason I think GRE is a big croc, a seriously flawed tool used by lazy adcoms who want to filter out people, and obviously a cash cow for ETS. Graduate adcoms should just make GRE subject mandatory if they really need a uniform way to compare people from different institutions.

"but quantitative scores were slightly higher for lower-ability examinees who had more time." - quote from the link.

If I score 800 under regualar time constraints, I will still get 800 under relaxed time constraints. So everybody who scores 800 anyway biases the curve.
Things are different for those who score lower. There are 3 cases to consider:
(1) Some people who don't have a clue about math will not get a better score no matter how much time they are given.
(2) The study only had 1.5 times the regular time limit. Some people (as I said before, given enough time) need 3 times as much time to solve those problems. So extra 20+ minutes don't do much good.
(3) Some people manage to score 30-50 points higher.
However, those in the 3rd get their improvement pulled towards the lower numbers by those in the 1st and 2nd cases.

 

[chervelle]

How much time did you spend in preparing for the test?

How many new words did you learn each day?

 

[Yuriy]

How much time did you spend in preparing for the test?

How many new words did you learn each day?

I don't remember my preparation time. Some people need 2 weeks, some need 2 months. It all depends on your schedule.

Regarding new words, my number is zero

 

[ooff]

Just a question add to this thread.

I understand Math section of GRE need to get full score 800. How about Verbal? How important is this section? Also, how about the Analytical section?

Thanks

 

[danielng]

Since you are applying FE, I assume you have a very solid background of Maths. I would say you simply need to download the ETS's free exam software. There are some practise questions as well as 2 full length exams.

For the verbal part, first of all, the vocab matters. Secondly, the vocab matters. Thirdly, the vocab matters!! As long as you have good vocab, you will score well!