Faux Real

23 Responses to “Question”

1. 1 JM Sep 3rd, 2006 at 2:56 am

   I don’t know about “people” but I know that I _didn’t_ study and when I took them today to refresh my scores from 2 years ago (seriously, I took the test this morning), I increased my score significantly on the verbal (from perfectly acceptable to “holy crap, I scored _x_”) .

   Instead, I attribute the jump in score to being immersed in a culture of words for the last 2 years.

   I don’t know how long it has been since you took the test, but unless you secretly have a terrible vocabulary or suspect reading comprehension skills (ha ha!) I will bet you will do quite well just going in cold.

2. 2 Lauren Sep 3rd, 2006 at 3:49 am

   Congrats on the test!

   Isn’t there a math section of the test? I’ve always been poor in mathematics and I’m really insecure that I could do well in this section.

3. 3 Kyso K Sep 3rd, 2006 at 7:49 am

   I reviewed the math portion from a book I found in the library, for like maybe half an hour a week or so before the test, and didn’t prepare at all for the verbal or the writing, and I absolutely kicked its ass.

   Now, that was the general GRE. The subject GREs are another planet and should be avoided at all possible costs.

4. 4 Luke Sep 3rd, 2006 at 8:48 am

   I just took the GRE General last week. I crammed pretty much by buying a Kaplan book and it did help in that it tells you exactly what to expect and does a good job of refreshing some of the SAT type techniques.

   I am the same way with math. Always struggled with it and because of some bad study planning, I barely brushed up on the stuff I haven’t looked at since high school. For me the problems themselves weren’t out of my complete range hard but it just took me forever to do them so I ended up pure guessing on the last few of each section (which everybody advises not to do, ha).

   As far as studying and how much that helps in score raising, the only thing I can say for sure is that brushing up on the vocab and learning just what to say on the analytical essay questions were a big boost.

5. 5 Dr. Brazen Hussy Sep 3rd, 2006 at 2:00 pm

   I studied a bit for the math section, but just by doing the free practice exam; I didn’t buy any of the books or anything. I did pretty well, but it’s been a looooooong time. The math wasn’t as bad as I expected - just algebra, I think.

6. 6 JM Sep 3rd, 2006 at 2:53 pm

   Oh yeah, the math. I was assuming you were going to take it for reasons other than going into a math-related field. If that’s the case (non-mathy field), you can do perfectly fine just knowing algebra and statistics, and consider any geometry knowledge a bonus. Might want to look at the free practice test like Dr BH said.

   As for the two writing pieces, those will be cake for you (again, just basing it on what you write in the course of a normal day :) ).

7. 7 Adrienne Sep 3rd, 2006 at 2:59 pm

   I would definitely study for the GRE. I started about a month before the test and practiced with a book and practice exams, and I think it definitely helped. Oddly enough, I was more scared of the math than the verbal, so I focused all my attention on that, but it turned out (for me, anyway), that the verbal section was way more challenging than I’d thought it would be (big words that you haven’t run across since your SAT days…), and the math was fairly basic. You’ll ace the written section, so don’t even worry about that. But brush up on the format of the test, memorize some of those fateful geometry equations, and practice some analogies. Good luck.

8. 8 Sean Carroll Sep 3rd, 2006 at 3:14 pm

   Studying for the subject test (e.g. in physics) is something that everyone in their right mind does quite a bit of. Studying for the general test is more optional, but practicing for the math test makes perfect sense if you haven’t been doing problems like that for a while.

9. 9 shannon Sep 3rd, 2006 at 4:46 pm

   I studied, mostly on math, but I did horribly on that section, and did well on the lightly studied verbal section. I used a GRE study book which you can get for free at the library. Also, you may want to subscribe to word of the day to get your word power up.

10. 10 JM Sep 3rd, 2006 at 4:53 pm

    Oh yeah, subject tests are a _completely_ different beast.

11. 11 Maureen Sep 3rd, 2006 at 5:35 pm

    When I took the GRE a good many years ago (maybe five years ago now, when the analytic section was still logic problems), I did find that the Kaplan study guide was helpful, if only because it tells you how the computer adaptive test works, and because it gives you strategies on how to answer certain types of questions. I definitely needed to study for the math section too, as it had been quite a few years since I had done long division or geometry. But a lot of these prep materials are on the web now, and I loathe the idea of giving Kaplan or ETS more money than they already make off of this racket.

12. 12 Lauren Sep 3rd, 2006 at 6:01 pm

    Okay, somebody fill me in on the subject area tests.

13. 13 LJ Sep 3rd, 2006 at 6:40 pm

    I’ve both taken the GRE and taught GRE prep, and studying does help. Brushing up on the content can never hurt (especially if you’re a bit rusty in things like geometry and algebra), but it also helps a lot to learn about how the computer assisted test works. The first third of each section is crucial to getting a good score - if you bomb the first third, you’re going to get a significantly lower score than if you aced the first third and bombed the last third. There’s also strategies that you can use to eliminate answer choices when you’re not sure about a given question. Teaching the GRE only served to reinforce my belief that these tests measure nothing so much as a person’s ability to take a test. (An aside: you might want to find out how the departments you’re applying to will weight the test - a lot of English departments won’t give a damn how you did on the quantitative section, but a lot of economics departments will.)

    As for the subject tests, there’s 8 of them: Biochemistry, Cell and Molecular Biology (this is one test), Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Literature in English, Mathematics, Physics, and Psychology. Not all schools in these disciplines require the subject test, which is good because they can be monstrous. They try to cram everything they think an undergrad in one of these majors should have learned in their four years of college into one test. Definitely, definitely study for the subject test should you need to take one.

14. 14 JM Sep 3rd, 2006 at 6:47 pm

    I believe the ones in the sciences [bio, chem, biochem, physics, comp sci] are suitably (and tremendously) difficult from what I hear, and one would be insane not to study for them. I don’t know about psychology and math, but I would assume the same. Literature is the only other non-science/math one, and the study method for it depends on the background one already has. For instance, being an Americanist is a disadvatange because the test is predominantly English lit. So, much devouring of the Norton Anthologies is often in order.

    If you’re not going into one of these fields, likely you won’t have a subject test requirement. Also, even if you are going into one of the above fields, the subject test might not be required. For instance, many English departments feel that a test containing 230 multiple choice questions is not a good predictor of future success. Thank god.

15. 15 Lauren Sep 3rd, 2006 at 7:29 pm

    Feh. Not only did I concentrate on American Lit, but I also concentrated on Modernism and Post-Modernism. I’m screwed. ;)

16. 16 JM Sep 3rd, 2006 at 7:44 pm

    No! You’ll be ok with the modernism. Ok, so if you’re talking about the GRE subject in lit, then _really_ don’t worry about the math portion of the GRE general test. Seriously. Admissions offices/departments won’t even look at it if you’re going in English.

17. 17 Lauren Sep 3rd, 2006 at 8:17 pm

    Now that I think about it, I’m also familiar with Romanticism and the Victorian era thanks to having taught it to a bunch of squirrely teenagers. To the library.

18. 18 Hugo Schwyzer Sep 3rd, 2006 at 8:30 pm

    I wince to admit I took the GRE back in 1988, and it may have changed. Three sections (verbal, math, logical reasoning). I didn’t study, and did well on the verbal, very well on the logic (that’s a hoot, I’m such an ENFP), and was three hundred points lower on the math. No subject test was required for the grad schools I applied to.

    If I had thought my math scores mattered, I would have studied. But I figured that most history Ph.D. programs wouldn’t be concerned if my math skills were those of an easily distracted eighth-grader.

19. 19 wolfa Sep 4th, 2006 at 3:59 pm

    There are usually cutoff scores in the other sections, even if they’re not as relevant. (The school often has them, if not the department, and it’s often somewhere around 500.) The math GRE section is, as I recall, easier than the math SATs. Do some practice tests, if you can, and find out what they consider a hard type of question and an easy, so you have a grasp of whether you’re doing well or not. (I freaked when my questions went from number theory to “read this graph”, until someone told me that graph-reading was then the hardest part of the math section. Which is true because of the crappy programs and trying to read them onscreen, actually, but still.) The samples are close enough that you should be fine in the exam if you’re ok on the practice tests.

20. 20 Sally Sep 4th, 2006 at 4:19 pm

    I think my last comment got lost in the ether. If not, sorry for the repetition.

    I took the GREs in 1996, and they’ve changed a lot since then, so I don’t have any specific advice about studying. I had a delusion that it would be a good idea to go to law school, so I studied for the LSATs, ended up not taking them, and took the GREs instead. I didn’t study specifically for the GREs, but I assume my LSAT studying helped me on the GREs. That would be less true now, presumably, since they’ve done away with the logic game section of the GRE.

    But I have two quick thoughts about GREs in general. The first is that, while everyone is right that the math section probably won’t matter at all to the department, things get more complicated when you consider funding. My department determined admissions, and they didn’t care much about the GREs in general. They didn’t care at all about the math section. But the university had a much bigger hand in determining funding, and they did care. I got a university-wide fellowship, and I think I got it mostly because I had high GRE scores across the board. There just aren’t that many other ways to compare students across disciplines, especially since you’re competing with an international group of students whose college grades are difficult to compare. Therefore, it’s probably in your best interest to put a little bit of effort towards the math section, even if it’s just reviewing basic formulas and stuff.

    Second of all, when I applied to grad school there was a history subject test, but it was ridiculous and was widely considered a joke. Only one of the eight programs I applied to required it. If I’d studied for it, it would have been a massive waste of my time. In other disciplines, admissions committees put a lot of stock in the subject test.

    Maybe you could email Michael Berube and ask him if he has an impression about how much weight literature programs give to the subject test? I bet he’s sat on an admissions committee at some point. When I applied to grad school, I was really surprised at how generous even big-name professors were with advice about the whole process.

21. 21 kate.d. Sep 5th, 2006 at 12:20 am

    i just have to chime in and say (since i’m not sure if you’re taking the general and the literature subject tests, or just the general) definitely study for the literature subject test, and it’d probably be good to study for the general test. i took the lit test first, at the end of my senior year of college, and when i took a practice test i flunked. like, holy-crap-did-i-read-anything-in-these-four-years flunked. so i studied like a madwoman for a month and ended up doing ok.

    then the general GREs were a few weeks later, and even though i was too mentally tired to do anything but some rudimentary studying, i still did pretty well. so, given that you haven’t been out of the academic world/mindset for too long, you should be ok on the general.

    good luck!

22. 22 zuzu Sep 5th, 2006 at 2:33 pm

    Well, I never took the GREs, but studying helped me on the LSATs.

    However, it wasn’t so much studying for subject matter as just familiarizing myself with the test conditions and choosing an answer from the four options given (with the LSATs, there are two answers you can eliminate off the bat, and two that could apply. The art is in choosing which of the two is the answer, and there’s a way to distinguish that’s reviewed in test prep).

    I bought a review book, studied with it for three weeks (using scrap paper instead of writing in the book) and returned it when I was done.

23. 23 Jackie Sep 6th, 2006 at 3:00 am

    Lauren, I don’t know if you’ll even see this comment, but have you downloaded the free practice test for the GRE Literature exam? It’s huge but definitely worth it. For the general test, email me if you want some info– I’m taking it this fall and I teach for the Princeton Review.

Leave a Reply