(no subject)

[proximoception]

I'm wondering if this GRE prep book was maybe a waste of money: I've taken most of the sample tests and the recent scores are about the same as the first. Also I'm deeply distrustful of preparation guides in general. I got one out of the library the night before I took the SAT, earned high 1500s on two sample tests and went to bed happy. I got I think 1370. Not the end of the world but the library deserved its money back. Also the questions I'm missing in this GRE book are too frequently equivocal or insane, esp. the ones for Reading Comprehension (my personal trouble area, apparently); I hope against hope that these aren't representative of the actual exam. Clearly my vanity plan of drilling my way to 1600 won't pan out; but my position's precarious enough given my education history that I need to score as high as I'm capable of. Anyone who's gone through this have any tips?

Comments

[agoraphiliac.livejournal.com]

The last time I took the GRE, it was for a grad program that said they'd only look at the language scores & the subject test in English. So I answered randomly on the quantitative test: C, C, C, C, C. I was done in ten minutes.

I did slightly better on that quantitative test than I had done years before, after studying. (But both scores were appallingly bad.) I'm deeply math-paralyzed, though, so I'm not a good example of whether studying is worth it.

I think you can get the hang of their bizarro reading-test logic. I got better at it through practice. "The main point of this is..." --always something that seems wrong, but I got used to figuring out which one they thought was right.

You'll score better than I did, and I got into grad schools.

What are you going to study?

[ex-commonpl.livejournal.com]

If it makes you feel any better, I don't remember the GREs; I forgot there was a reading comprehension section at all. The way the scoring system shakes out, you can miss quite a few and still be in the 97th or 98th percentile, even though your raw verbal score is 92% or something (which, if memory serves, is not quite how the SAT works). So you'll feel like you're doing a lot worse than you are, in my experience: the test-taking experience will be extremely demoralizing, but you'll turn out okay. As the commentor above said, you might as well ignore the quantitative section, I've been told that nobody looks at that, unless it has some relation to your field.

(I curse the GREs. I will soon be paying those bastards about $150 that I don't have to send my scores out again. Makes me sick.)

[princenarcissus.livejournal.com]

The only prep book that actually helped me on the GRE was by Princeton Review . . .

Hope that helps!

(wish I had time to comment on every single one of your posts, but this is actually something that might be useful)