kimchijajonshim

Pretty much vibes with my experience. The PowerPrep tests don't appear to be adaptive (or are not as adaptive) as the real thing, so the quant will be harder on the test day if you get a "hard section"; not a impossibly harder, but noticeably so. Still easier than Magoosh and especially Manhattan (although I think Manhattan is in part due to poor question design, particularly their data interpretation questions).

It sounds like the test psyched you out and that you're not predisposed to dealing with that stress well. Unless you really, really feel like your knowledge base is lacking, I'd do whatever the hell it takes to relax over the next few weeks and get yourself in the right mindset. I can feel the stress oozing out of your pores just reading that first post. Get your hands on some ganja, get a Xanax prescription, take up meditation, just do whatever it takes to get to a serviceable state of mind by Nov. 6.

Hahahaha, this is a language/cultural barrier thing. A double burger is not two separate burgers. A double burger is a single burger with twice as much meat. x+y = 50 x + 1.5y = 72.50 Solve for x. Simple as that.

I've been diagnosed, but I'm convinced I have a mild case of combination ADHD . Or maybe I'm just a scatter-brained millinenial, but in any case I have trouble focusing sometimes and am prone to stupid errors. I think you just need to practice as much as you can to catch sight of your tendencies and train yourself not about situations when you are likely to make mistakes. I did that and was able to clean things up significantly. If you've a particular bad case, you might want to create a mental "checklist" which is something that helped me at work (however this might be at some cost of time). Additionally, I'd give meditation a shot. It helps my focus tremendously. Just a few minutes before the test starts and a few minutes during the break helped me a lot I felt. Your mileage may vary with that one, but what's the harm?

I agree with this. I think it's a useful exercise of your ability to form cogent positions and support them in a short period of time. If anything it's perhaps one of the useful, more well-thought portions of the test. The ability to write clearly, concisely, and persuasively matters in a lot of contexts; when would you ever need to know what "obsequious" or "quiescent" means? Whether or not the grading is careful or thoughtful, I don't know. But I consider myself a strong and concise writer, and came away in the range I expected and consider the score a fair approximation of my ability.

If it's in your budget, buy the Magoosh Premium online set for $100 USD. I think they have 560 or so math practice questions. I only had 3 weeks to study and the Magoosh plan was BY FAR the best investment I made (perhaps just as helpful was the ETS PowerPrep stuff, but it's available for free online). They helped me raise my math score about 10 points in 3 weeks. If you're starting from scratch and need really, really in-depth math lessons, you might want to invest in something more substantive. But if you already have a strong foundation in math (probably so if you're going for Comp Sci) and just need a refresher and practice, I think Magoosh is phenomenal. They have a few hours of video lessons, with topic overviews, helpful explanations, and a lot of very useful shortcuts, tips, and strategies. The practice problems are great. They're substantively harder than what's on the actual test. The only issue I found is that sometimes the Magoosh people try to be very clever with trick questions I never saw in any ETS official material (maybe more common on the old test), testing whether you can spot the trick rather than whether or not you can set the problem up properly. But broadly if you can handle the Magoosh questions, you'll be overprepared for the real thing. The only drawback would be that can make "practice tests" out of the Magoosh questions, but really I don't think it's an issue. The Magoosh questions underestimated my score by 5+ points because they're harder than what's on the test. They're fantastic training, but not a very accurate gauge of your ability. Just work through the questions, try to understand them, and you're golden.

http://magoosh.com/gre/2013/stanford-gre-scores/ Stanford Chemistry Projected Average Ranges Verb: 162-166 Quant: 161-165 I would not retake it. Even if your scores are disappointing you're well within the ranges, you're at a point of diminishing returns. If you're going to get in, you'll get in. If you're not going to get in, getting a few extra points on the GRE (unless you score straight 170s with a 6) are probably not going to affect much either.

The decision's right after you see your scores. Don't know how long you have. I suppose until the proctors kick you out because someone else needs to use the computer.

Can't speak to everyone's experience (I took computer test), but I saw my scores (other than AWA) before having the option to send them to anyone. You need to know the institution code and the department. Institution code is enough enough to find depending on the school, department code could be a pain in the ass depending on the school. I couldn't find the latter, which is why I opted to wait and nearly had to pay them. Sucks because they don't give you advance notice, expect you to know your programs, and don't give you any means by which to find out information you don't know (since I don't have my phone on me or anything). They nearly denied my claim for a freebie because I didn't go and tell the Prometric proctor that I couldn't find my school. They expect this after taking a 4 hour test you're relieved to have just finished. Are you serious? As I said, total cash grab while given a token "service" to students. Yep. You will know your Quant and Verbal scores before you send (at least I did), but then you need some sort of rubric about your top 4 schools for your range of scores. I had done zero research on programs other than one in particular I was looking at, which is a bit annoying because I otherwise would have done some more research. It's just absurd they expect you to track this stuff when you should just be focused on taking the test.

ETS will submit 4 score reports for you for "free" as part of your test fee, however you must declare the 4 recipients at the test center. If you want to send any after the test (even if you did not use any of the 4), they will charge you $27 USD a recipient. They have a section to this on their website, but they do not mention it in the confirmation email nor in the click-through materials registering on the website (my customer service rep did not mention it to me when I registered by phone). I don't recall having seen anything about additional cost on-screen at the test center, but honestly I was tired and might have breezed through it. In general, I get the sense it's a token attempt to say they offer "free" score reporting while actually milking grad applications as much as they can. Make sure you know those 4 schools you want to submit to beforehand, otherwise you will either need to pay $108 USD or call them later to complain. I did the latter and was only able to get them to make a "one-time exception" to give me 2 of them. I'm sure I could have gotten all four if I'd complained long enough, but: A.) I'd already wasted half an hour on it, B.) I only knew one program I planned to apply to for sure on the day of my test, so as far as I'm concerned I came out one freebie ahead, and C.) I'm not sure I'll apply to 4 schools.

On a top level, I can tell you're not a native English speaker. You make a lot of tiny mistakes which I suspect will hurt you on the exam. Unfortunately, I don't think you can do anything about that unless you have a pretty long timeline to practice writing. English is a very, very tricky language. Your thesis does not make sense. The prompt asks you to consider whether education should encourage study that will lead to "lucrative careers." Your thesis says "All educational institutions have got an aim to prepare their students to be a professional individual of the society and serve for its community in a best way. Educational institutions should play an active role to inspire their students to choose a field of study which will prepare them to gain a profitable profession. However, I don’t believe that educational should do so for three reasons." I don't know what you're saying. You're either saying that education roles SHOULD encourage students to go into a profitable profession... except they shouldn't (which doesn't make sense). Or you're saying that they should encourage it, but it should not be the primary goal. I get what your arguing after reading the rest but I would struggle a lot with that main point. Don't use contractions (use "do not" instead of "don't") in formal essays. First argument paragraph about passion: you make the point about passion, but you don't really state whether it should take priority over lucrative career and state how it's INCONSISTENT with a lucrative career. Someone who follows their dreams can totally make it rich... why should passion be more important than money? You're basically saying "you should follow your dreams" without explaining how that is better than or inconsistent with a focus on lucrative careers. I think your second body paragraph has a good foundation, but is still not quite there. You have two cogent points: students may not be suited to lucrative careers by their nature talents and encourage students into "popular" fields can have an unintendedly poor impact on the lucrativeness of the field. Howeveryou kind of mix these things together poorly. I get what you're trying to say, but the two ideas are not synthesized into one idea. By encouraging people to do things beyond their capabilities in search of lucrative work, it can be counter intuitively hurt the students, industry, and the school. The biggest thing that stands out of me it that you ignore the second part of the prompt: "In developing and supporting your position, be sure to address the most compelling reasons and/or examples that could be used to challenge your position." You completely ignore the merits of the other side. Beyond this specific prompt, in any kind of argumentative essay if you don't consider and counter the strength of the other side, you will get dinged.

They have math flash cards (https://gre.magoosh.com/flashcards/math/decks), but I can't imagine those being terribly helpful. Knowing the concepts is one thing, being able to apply them is completely different. If you have the time to grind away on math questions over the next week (minimum say 2 hours a day, ideally more like 3-4) I'd suck it up and just buy the math-only Magoosh package ($80). Little pricy, but that's basically the price of one application and it'll be worth it if it bumps your score by any appreciable margin. The Magoosh math questions were by FAR the most useful tool for drilling and learning math, and I jumped about 10 points thanks to them. A cheaper option is Manhattan's "challenge problems" (http://www.manhattanprep.com/gre/store/item/gre-challenge-problems/) for $8. These are 150 apparently stupid hard questions that the Manhattan curriculum guys geek out over (not sure what the quant to verbal break down is). Given that Manhattan questions are ALREADY significantly harder than what's on the actual test, I don't think this would be all that helpful.

Yea. I don't see how the Manhattan tests are "interchangeable." You could maybe make the case that they're not "harder," just more time consuming... but again, that changes a lot in times of the experience and time management. If I were doing it again, I would probably give myself at least 20% extra time on Manhattan tests, period. And I agree with the ETS having trickier "logic" than Manhattan. I think Magoosh is much, much better about emulating this, although Magoosh takes it to an extreme sometimes with tricky little details like the distinction between "numbers" and "integers", zero being an even number, etc. I don't remember that being relevant once on the test. I didn't work a specific relationship and I didn't get a score breakdown on test day, so I couldn't tell you what percentage nets what. I think a lot of it depends on the specific test, particularly with the paper tests. If you'll notice, the scoring rubric on Paper Test 1 is much more lenient than Paper Test 2, which is likely because it's harder. A note: I scored a bit lower on the paper tests than I did on test day, Power Prep was by far the most accurate predictor for me.

Just for future reference. I had to cram my studying into 3 weeks, so I had a hell of a time finding good, solid resources on a quick timeline. I supposed it worked, as I scored well and improved significantly from my first (untested) diagnostic test. It's late, I'll edit this in the morning, but it gets my initial thoughts out. Manhattan Practice Tests - 1 Year Access ($30) 6/10 + Adaptive computer practice tests + Questions randomly pulled from a pool on the fly + Six unique practice tests guaranteed, but unlimited tests for a 1 year period + One free trial test You cannot do questions in isolation, only in the context of practice tests. The inability to break questions out from practice test setting was annoying. You can't "re-do" questions until you've done at least 6 tests, at which point you can reset the questions and hope you come across a particular question again. In that respect, far inferior to Magoosh. These were the first resource I used. Honestly it freaked me out. I was scoring in the high 150s, low 160s, which was significantly lower than I expected. As it turns out, these questions are WAY, way harder than those on the actual test. On the Power Preps and the actual tests, I would finish up quant with may 5-8 minutes to go. With these, I was running out of time and often just throwing out guesses on questions. The tests are a great training tool because they are harder than the questions on the GRE, but they're a poor diagnostic tool because it's not accurate. Be warned, their data analysis questions are terrible. Flat out terrible. Their questions are ambiguous, their charts are poorly laid out, "approximated" answers are too close together, and their charts are often too large to comfortable see and compare. I had to often scroll back and forth between two charts, which you will NEVER have to do on the GRE. I even saw a few typos. Really, really poor showing in that respect. They provide a lot of data about questions, but it's not presented intuitively or in a manner that's particularly useful. For example you can isolate by question difficulty or by question, by not by question difficulty THEN by question type. You can play with them in Excel to make this work, but they really should do this for you. The UI they use to generate score assessment reports is also not very good. Magoosh Premium ($99) 9/10 + Hours of video for verbal, quant, and AWA. + Video explanations for each question. + 585 quant practice questions, 545 verbal questions + Can generate "practice tests" from the pool of practice problems By far the most useful LEARNING resource I used. I zoomed through the math video content really quickly (in a couple days, over the course of maybe 3-4 hours). The math videos were very helpful with useful tricks and tips. Even when I knew how to do things, I learned a few neat tricks I found really helpful. Their practice questions are great, on average significantly harder than what's on the test. Each question has a video explanation and links back to the relevant lessons, so it's quite simple to work through. They also have a much more robust, intuitive data analysis tool than Manhattan that lets you identify your weaknesses and mess around with settings on the fly. Similar to Manhattan, my practice tests with Magoosh underestimated my score. But I as a practice tool, it was much more on point. The questions themselves seemed better, and I could more easily repeat specific questions I either got wrong or "flagged" as particularly difficult. I didn't go through a ton of verbal, but their verbal questions don't seem to be as on point as their quant. I got roughly 20-25% of questions wrong, whereas on the official materials I got more like 10% wrong. Can't put my finger on it, but they were for me at least much harder than actual verbal questions. Magoosh Vocabulary Builder Android App (Free) 2/10 To me, this app was useless. It's set up like a game, where you are given a word and then given 4 possible definitions. If you get it wrong, you will see that word 3 more times before you "master it". I found this really pretty much useless. First, you're never going to see a word like this on the GRE, except MAYBE in a reading comp question. More likely you need to be able to see a word and know its meaning, rather than identify its meaning from 4 choices. Additionally, the meanings were often truncated and it had no way of dealing with words with multiple meanings. I went through the entire thing and learned very little. Time wasted. Should have gone straight to the flash cards app. Magoosh Flashcards Android App (Free) 7/10 This app could be great with a few tweaks, but as is it's just a useful but flawed tool. Great for a free tool, I suppose. It's similar to the Vocab Builder in that it repeats vocab words you don't know. You see a "flashcard," "flip it", and either pick "I knew this word" or "I didn't know this word." If you didn't know the word, you will see it 4 more times and you must "know" it before you "master" it. Really, really useful tool for improving vocab. The biggest issue with this is the way that you can't flag particularly hard words. For example, each flash card deck is 50 words or so. But you can't flag words that are giving you trouble and mix them in with other words from other decks. Worse than that, the algorithm for showing words is random, so you might see the same word three times in the span of six cards, even if you've "mastered it." So rather than being able to go through just maybe 2 troublesome words in a 50 word deck, you have to go through not only the entire 50, but 100+. And you could go through those 100+ and still not see the 2 words you need to learn. Great the first time through, but really frustrating on a refresher. Official Guide to the GRE Revised Test, 2nd Edition (~$20) 2/10 I breaking this out into two sections, the guide as a didatic book and the guide as a practice tool. As a teaching tool, this thing sucks. It's not in-depth enough to teach it from scratch, but too in-depth to be a good just general overview kind of guide. I thought in particular the whole "union" of two data sets (A ∪ versus the "intersection" of two data sets (A ∩ thing was particularly laughable. It takes a relatively simple, intuitive concept and then throws in a bunch of technical math terms and unnecessary abstraction. GRE Official Guide Tests / Power Prep 9/10 The GRE comes with 2 paper tests (more questions and more time than computer, non-adaptive) and 2 tests on disc. These computer tests are also available for free download as Power Prep II software. I found this to be the most useful diagnostic tool. I don't know what to say except these were the most accurate representation of what was on the test, because they were made by ETS. They put my mind at ease because I scored much better on them than on Manhattan and Magoosh equivalents. One caveat, if you are a high scorer (high enough to get the "hard" section your second time through), you will probably run into harder problems on the real test than on Power Preps. I don't believe the Power Preps are adaptive, and I recall at least 3-4 questions on both quant and verbal which were significantly harder than anything I remembered from Power Prep. It's not a gamechanger, but something to be aware of. If you receive the medium or easy section, it should be a relatively good representation of what you'll see on test day.

These tests were taken over the course of roughly 3 weeks, starting on 9/12 and culminating in test today. I focused mostly on quant, knowing that I have a pretty strong knack for verbal. Manhattan Adaptive Tests (Custom pulled from pool, adaptive) 9/12 (taken without prep, includes essays): Q 159, V 164 9/18 (Q): 159 9/19 (Q): 161 9/20 (Q): 161 9/24 (Q): 164 Magoosh Tests (Custom pulled from pool, adaptive) 9/15 (Q): 161 9/18 (Q): 162 9/20 (Q): 162 GRE Official Guide Paper Test 1 (9/20) Q 165, V 167 GRE Official Guide Paper Test 2 (9/21) Q 166, V 167 Power Prep Test 1 (9/23) Q 169, V 168 Power Prep Test 2 (9/25) Q 167, V 170 Actual Test (10/3) Q 170, V 170, essay TBD. Both Magoosh and Manhattan severely underestimated my score, to the point that I was starting to freak out after a week of little improvement and subpar (for my standards) scores. However, I calmed down significantly once I transitioned to the official GRE material, which I assumed was much more accurate. The official tests unsurprisingly turned out to be the most accurate gauge. That said, I don't think the Power Preps are adaptive, and they are set to follow a "medium" path. On the real test, I obviously got the "hard" question and had several questions in both quantitative and verbal which were MUCH harder than anything I saw on the Power Prep tests. Luckily I answered/guess those questions correctly, but my 2nd sections on both were harder than anything PowerPrep threw my way. If you get a medium or easy second section, I imagine it'd be right on the money.

I spent yesterday trying to sign up for Oct. 3rd in two different testing sites and was having issues. For some reason Oct. 7 was no problem, but I needed to take the test by the 4th and the 3rd was the latest date available. I called them and was able to sign up that way no issue. Hopefully not a systemic problem.