Gre

[Pretty_Diamonds]

Have you taken it?
What were your scores?
Did you get into your desired school?
Were you proud of your scores?
DID YOU THINK IT WAS EASY? HARD?
Which section was the hardest for you? Verbal? Math? Essay?
Did you take any practice tests? Any prep courses?

I took a course, took 5 practice tests, did horrible, probably won't get into grad school. =(
Verbal was crazy hard even though I memorized like 500 GRE vocab words. I kept running out of time on the math sections (time out with 5 remaining questions--TWICE).

I plan on taking it again in a couple weeks. Also taking another course. Plus studying. I didn't think I was *that* stupid but I am.

GRE is.... a $200 confidence killer that crushes all hope for the future.

 

[Jerry Atrick]

How long did you study for the GRE before taking it? The people who publish the GRE study books recommend spending like 3 months studying so the information can sink in. It is not the sort of test you can cram for in 2 weeks.

I took the test twice, once in 2009 and once October 2012. I'm not going to share my scores but between the test dates my Verbal went up, my Math went down, and my analytical writing stayed roughly the same. I guess that makes me Even Steven.

I did not do any prep courses and only used the books published by Princeton Review and Kaplan. I prolly should have done a prep course but decided against it for some reason.

I recommend studying for 1 to 3 months before taking it again. Bombing the test and retaking it in only two weeks does not sound like a very good idea.

 

[Pretty_Diamonds]

Pathetically, I've actually been studying for it for about 6 months (2 months religiously after I graduated). Yeah, I have Kaplan books and did the Kaplan prep course.

I took the GRE test a few weeks ago so there will be about 5 weeks in between the two test dates.

 

[MonKeYDNA]

verbal- 153
math- 154
writing- 3.5

It's an average score, but I knew I could do better. I pretty much studied the same as you. I did NOT know about the extra section that wasn't going to be scored and having the writing section first, which I never practiced when I did full exams, completely destroyed my stamina. But, at least we can take it again

All in all, I thought it was pretty easy. The test is more about logic and reasoning than actually knowing semantics, which is good for me because I don't remember semantics worth a dookie. For vocab, I took 2 years of Latin in HS, and that's really helped me with vocab throughout uni, maybe try to learn a few pages of latin/greek roots?

 

[Lysis]

^ Have they changed the scoring for it? I got a score out of 1500. 750 for math and 750 for English. I fucked up and studied the math part thinking the English would be easy as shit and only got a 530 on the English and a 650 in math. My goal was 1200 and missed it by 20 damn points. Had I not blown off the English part, I would have rocked it.

I only studied for a month. I really didn't think the math was hard at all. I mean a few things stumped me like the geometry that I didn't remember at all, but compared to the stuff you have to study for comp sci, it's nothing.

The antonyms got me a few times, because I thought two words would fit the answer, but the loooooong ass stories and then answering them got me the most. I'm just naturally ADD when it comes to stuff I'm not interested in and skim over it and my brain just shuts off and doesn't care. lol

So I basically have the scores of an ESL. LOL It's cool for me, because the college I would do a master's in only requires a 1000 to get in, and math is what counts for science majors. But I do think about it as a personal challenge and I consider maybe doing it again after studying both parts.

 

[ebola?]

I took the test in 2005, so I'm not even sure if my experiences are relevant anymore. It used to be that the math section covered only pretty basic material (really, only up to prealgebra and elementary geometry), the only difficulty introduced being convoluted presentation of questions. Accordingly, a perfect score was only 90th percentile. It used to be that the vocab section would be iteratively calibrated to be quite difficult (I didn't know most of the words it gave me, and I doubt my lexical set lacking ), so high scores were dependent on learning how to guess effectively. Now, they have multi-part questions that devalue guesses and more advanced math. Maybe the analytical writing section is similar.

I did okay, but I totally forget what my prior scores were. Estimates:

verbal: ~640/800 (90th percentile)
quant: ~730/800 (71st percentile)
writing: 6/6, bitches!

As I took it, the verbal seemed extremely difficult, the math pretty easy, and the writing very easy.

I should have studied more--I put in ~12 hours total learning strategies from a Kaplan book and taking practice tests. For the verbal, i read over lists of common words and learned how to guess tactically. For the quant, I just reviewed to make sure I hadn't forgotten math from elementary and middle school. For the writing, I just did a couple practice tests...forum posting really trained me to do excellently on this.


I got into my top choice of school, its program rated number one by US News; I was lucky--study more than I did.

ebola

 

[ebola?]

Also, hell nah, son, still DRE!

 

[MonKeYDNA]

^ Have they changed the scoring for it? I got a score out of 1500. 750 for math and 750 for English. I fucked up and studied the math part thinking the English would be easy as shit and only got a 530 on the English and a 650 in math. My goal was 1200 and missed it by 20 damn points. Had I not blown off the English part, I would have rocked it.

I only studied for a month. I really didn't think the math was hard at all. I mean a few things stumped me like the geometry that I didn't remember at all, but compared to the stuff you have to study for comp sci, it's nothing.

The antonyms got me a few times, because I thought two words would fit the answer, but the loooooong ass stories and then answering them got me the most. I'm just naturally ADD when it comes to stuff I'm not interested in and skim over it and my brain just shuts off and doesn't care. lol

So I basically have the scores of an ESL. LOL It's cool for me, because the college I would do a master's in only requires a 1000 to get in, and math is what counts for science majors. But I do think about it as a personal challenge and I consider maybe doing it again after studying both parts.

Yep, I think they changed the scoring last year. It's super great because every graduate program was on top of everything and converted their scores immediately after it went into effect. Just kidding, it sucks, I have yet to find a program that has the new scoring system req's on the website. So now we have to look at a conversion chart, it'd be a lot easier if I just wrote my score down... yeah... should probably do that.

ebola? DRE? and I hate to love you for that writing score.

 

[Lysis]

I don't even remember my writing score. I should look at that.

 

[Apostacious]

Fortunately for me, it was waived based on bridging relationships with professors, and having the ocd necessary to have a very good scholastic record. I would hate taking the GRE, because the amount of time I would put in studying until I felt confident would probably be well beyond what is necessary (per the norm :/).

 

[Pretty_Diamonds]

Thanks everyone for your responses! The scoring has changed. I think it's 140-160 for each section. The average is 151. Schools generally want 155+.

 

[Dresden]

I took the GRE in the late 1990's. Back then there were 3 sections each graded from 200 to 800: Verbal, Math, and Quantitative Reasoning. There was no essay. I got a 680 Verbal, a 770 Math, and a 510 Quantitative Reasoning. The first two scores were excellent, but the 510 Quantitative Reasoning was only mediocre/slightly above average. I have still never applied to graduate school, mainly because my grades sucked in college (due to dropping out after the drop deadline more than once and not applying myself like I did in high school--and drugs, plenty of hard drugs). For some reason (idiot savantism?), I could never master the Quantitative Reasoning section. The math back then was basically just Algebra I/II and Geometry.