The GRE is kinda like the SAT number 2, its required by pretty much all US graduate schools, so if you plan on going to graduate school, you will probably end up taking this test. This post is about my experience with the GRE, both good and bad.
So first of all, the GRE doesn’t actually test “inner knowledge”. It isn’t something that you either have or do not have. As a result, if you seriously put in time studying for this test, you will improve your score by quite a bit. I do, however think that obtaining a perfect 170/170 and a 6 on the writing requires innate talent, and isn’t attainable by most people. However, decent scores like 160/160/4 are attainable by anyone, as long as they work for it.
I studied for the GRE for about 2 and a half months, I started in early august and took the exam today, October 23, 2015 at 8:00 Am. I’ve taken countless practice tests, and in the beginning, I was scoring about 160 quant and in the low mid 150s for the verbal section. These scores were above average but they were not what I wanted.
I did not study any additional information for quant except going over practice questions. One thing that really held me back in the beginning was my arrogance as an engineer. I thought that Math is probably my best subject so I can and will get every single math question right. The problem with that assertion was that if I got stumped on a math question it really blew my pompous self. I would stay at the question determined I could solve it because I’m an engineer regardless of the time spent. As a result, I sometimes finished a few practice tests with unanswered questions. After I gained some humility, my scores in quant steadily improved. If you don’t know the answer to a question skip it and save it for later! Swallow your pride!
As for verbal, well, this part of the test was really challenging for me. The main problem with the GRE is that the passages and sentences are very easy to understand, but the answer choices are esoteric and arcane words that you will have never seen before. Thus, I’ll say his here and now: The key to getting a good verbal score on the GRE is actually knowing what words mean. Yes. This means you actually have to spend time learning like a thousand words. Its tough, and it sucks but if you want a good verbal, there is simply no bypassing this requirement. Process of elimination can only get you so far. In order to study for this I used magoosh GRE flash cards app for the iphone. Whenever I had some down time I would pull out my phone and try to learn new words. However, even this sometimes is not enough, whenever I had to read any text at all and came across a word that I did not know, I wrote it down in my GRE Notebook. I decided that I would not tolerate an unknown word and that I would make sure to have at least seen it once. This worked out pretty well as evident in my last few practice test.
I took alot of practice tests, but the ones I took seriously (as in everything in order with strict time limits etc testing conditions) were in the last week of my prep before the test. I took the free Kaplan GRE test online and scored a 160/166 V/Q. I was pretty happy with this as Kaplan is known as one of the harder tests. Right Before the test, ~2 days before I took one of ETS’s own practice tests. I scored 160/165, which again was close to what I wanted. You should definitely save an ETS practice test for the last couple days before your exam. These practice tests are the most similar in content to the actual exam!
So, then the fated day came Friday October 23. I went to bed super early, 8:30 Pm and woke up around 5am to do some last minute vocab work. I left for the test site and got there at 7:30 and began my exam at 8. The security check is insane. They check your pockets, pants, and use a metal bar to make sure you are not taking anything but yourself and ID into the room. They also make you sign in and out every time you leave the room. Overall though, the actual GRE quant felt easier than any of the practice, but the Verbal felt harder than any of the practice for me. Evidently, I was wrong as far as Verbal went and I was correct for the quant because I left with a fat nice juicy score of
167 quant/161 verbal
And I am currently awaiting my writing scores. I felt pretty good about my essays so I expect at least a 4.
The above scores put me at ~87 percentile for verbal and ~94 percentile for quant.
Feeling pretty good about these scores, now I just need to tough out the chem GRE, which I am taking tomorrow in the morning. When I take tests, I take all the tests.
Till tomarrow, probably
Akash Sky
Akash Sky 