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InvisibleHand

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  1. Unfortunately, the difference between a 169 and 170 Q score is far from trivial for some of the PhD programs that I'll be applying to...
  2. PowerPrep I, before much studying: 164 Q / 170V Power Prep II, after studying: 168 Q / 170V Paper ETS test I (close to test day): 170 Q / 168 V Paper ETS test II (closest to test day): 170 Q / 170 V Magoosh estimated Q range: 156 - 161 Magoosh estimated V range: 161 - 166 Kaplan practice tests were in the mid-160's. Actual GRE: 169 Q / 169 V / 6.0 AW I'm still going to retake to try to get 170 / 170. I think I know the questions I got wrong and, on that basis, will be tailoring my plan of study accordingly. The errors were careless more than anything attributable to a lack of comprehension or knowledge, so I'll be focusing as much on developing the discipline necessary to minimize the risk of any such mistakes while maintaining the existing stock of knowledge (and brushing up on vocab, a weakness for me in the verbal section). A few takeaways that may be helpful for people: (1) ETS material is your Bible. Dissect apart every question in the ETS paper books, even if you got it right, and with the PowerPrep tests. Approach it like a forensic psychologist, trying to understand what the ETS hoped you would think and the underlying logic behind the entirety of the question. This holds for both the quant and verbal sections. Everything that is not from the ETS will be a major step down in its value as an investment of your time relative to content from the ETS. Nonetheless, there is not a ton of it, so you will likely end up needing to turn to second-best solutions if you put in a lot of time studying. (2) Be extremely wary of outside test prep companies that try to be "harder" than the real GRE test. On quant, in particular, they attempt to generate dispersion between student answers to make their content "hard." But I've found they end up adding in more computational steps and phases of calculation to make the question "hard" and that this does not necessarily reflect what the GRE tests. The GRE quant seemed to focus more on concepts that are less computationally intensive once you realize the underlying principle at hand. GRE reading comprehension questions from outside sources seemed to be worse than harmless (I can recall at least one Magoosh critical reading question where I am certain the "logic" behind the "best answer" was far too sloppy for it to have made it past ETS and into the GRE). Sentence completions seemed marginally more realistic, but still second-best to anything from ETS. (3) That said, with point (2) in mind, there is a non-zero value in computationally demanding (quant) questions, especially if you are mindful of their limitations. They're good for developing discipline, and often there is the kernel of a concept buried beneath the calculations, which have a non-zero value in their own right. But do not, ever, treat compilations of these questions as "practice tests" that simulate the experience of the GRE. I don't see how this could do anything but distort your sense of timing and make you less effective as a taker of the exam produced by ETS, ultimately the goal of all this practice. The GRE Q seems more to be about efficient logic and critical thinking, and less about labor-intensive computations, than questions from third parties would likely leave you inclined to think. But it does not necessarily follow that the latter has zero cross-over to the former. (4) The Analytical Writing is better thought of as "critical thinking, expressed in written form." I tried to use the ETS online practice essay grader, but apparently wrote too much for their algorithm to be able to grade it (over 1000 words: I typically wrote 1100 or 1200 and think I did about the same on test day). Every type of argument seems vulnerable to the same basic logical fallacies, to varying degrees. Have a list of these and be prepared to apply them. Every argument they present has more holes than Swiss cheese if you look closely. And have a basic set of thoughts for each of the possible categories the "position" essay requires. Beyond that, I would just emphasize having clear topic sentences for each paragraph and addressing any counter-examples, if time permits. But really approach it as an exercise in argument rather than pretty prose construction. (5) The questions were less adaptive than I'd have thought, though the seemingly "easy" questions were harder than I'd anticipated and the seemingly "hard" questions easier than I'd have thought. There were fewer layups and fewer three point shots than I'd have thought. The only caveat to this is that the second verbal section was pretty difficult throughout. (6) The sentence completions were way less about vocabulary per se, and much more about the logic of the sentence and the condition that the two words render the sentence alike in meaning. (7) Above all, the GRE is a critical thinking test. It was more stimulating, even funner, than I'd have thought it to be. And be wary of all content from test prep companies. Perhaps the best prep seemed to be in critically thinking about and dissecting the ETS content, while appreciating the non-zero value of most third party questions without forgetting that they should be taken with a grain of salt and have an imperfect relation to ETS content.
  3. The passages are as much about what the text doesn't say as what it does. They want you to confuse an intimation for an implication. Think of it this way: if you developed amnesia before the test, and knew literally nothing besides how to read & reason, would you be able to surmise that inference? The test loves for you to make leaps towards commonly held beliefs based on the tone of the passage and something it hints at. Another way of looking at it is thinking of yourself as a prosecutor, every passage as a confession, and every question as asked by a judge in the trial...you can make inferences only what is stated explicitly or implied in the passage, not on anything else, even if it is tempting to generalize. You must be able to infer, based on the text, beyond a reasonable it. The defense would love for you to read too far into it and make unsubstantiated claims based on preexisting beliefs that you hold, but that are not necessarily supported by the limited evidence admitted to the court. Also, if two choices each share a logical implication, but one requires the shared logical implication plus something else to be true, it will always be the simpler of the two choices. That's the only way ETS could have only one right answer: if a choice that imply "x and y" and a choice that implies "x" are both options, and it is a multiple choice question requiring you to choose one answer, the only way to have only one true statement would be for "x" alone to be the answer.
  4. Ah, but one cannot permit one's level of concentration or stress or level of sleep to be "exogenous" for something as (potentially) consequential as the GRE Admissions committees do not run OLS regressions to adjust your score for "exogenous" factors that have influenced it on that particular date and time... To the master, even the slightest detail must become what an economist would term "endogenous"...no one carers if the sniper *could* have hit the target, if only he figured out how to calm his nerves. And so the marksman cannot dismiss the banalities of execution as any less elemental to the successful shot than the grandest of theories. Sampling variance, I would wager, is endogenous at the individual-level. The only way to (with 95% confidence) get your target score is to get your target score to within two standardized deviations of your mean score. This requires the right mean and a sufficiently small level of variation around that mean. I think it's easiest to converge on the desired mean first, and then narrow the variance second.
  5. Yanaka: how did you think the actual GRE stacked up to the PowerPrep exams from the ETS? It seems the ETS concept is more "conceptual" in nature and tries to dig at mathematical intuitions, whereas Magoosh is more computationally-intensive. So I don't think necessarily think the one is harder than the other, just that they are different.
  6. Yes, but even Magoosh's blog says that the GRE's materials, however limited they are in quantity, are better preparation for the GRE than anything else...and the PowerPrep II exam is adaptive. Magoosh Superfans will not be a great source of evaluation for Magoosh, since it would only include Magoosh users who have chosen to "super fans".
  7. Some weeks ago, I took the first of the two PowerPrep exams after going over the GRE's quantitative content in their quantitative prep book and doing the practice questions. I got a 170V and a 164Q. I had done no real verbal prep besides doing a few vocab apps on the bus en route to work over the past month or so. These were good scores, but I wanted to improve my math performance (and touch up on the Verbal section: I missed one critical reading question but still got 170 with the curve), so I subscribed to Magoosh. They seemed to have an extensive bank of questions they wrote. With only one exception, the questions I missed on the quantitative section of the first PowerPrep exam were careless mistakes. So my goal with Magoosh was really to have an extensive bank of test-prep questions to drill down on the discipline and test-taking technique necessary to avoid careless errors. And their large number of questions seemed like a good fit for that particular task. While I don't score as consistently well on the "Hard" or "Very Hard" Magoosh questions as I would have tended to anticipate, I'm somewhat skeptical that many of the tactics that separate those who answer the Magoosh questions successfully from those who don't are necessarily tactics or strategies that will prove valuable on the GRE exam itself (though some certainly seem like they could be). It is, of course, possible that my PowerPrep I score was simply an aberration and that Magoosh is giving me a more accurate forecast of future test scores. Has anyone else been in a similar situation of scoring (relatively) highly on the first PowerPrep exam? The situation, here, being that I scored fairly well on the first PowerPrep exam and now want to make the minor improvements that seem like they could get my score up to the ceiling, but am now feeling as if third-party content is introducing to at least some extent a different set of "signals" into their questions than does the GRE. I'm leaning towards using Magoosh to brush-up on certain content areas of the quantitative section, but turning to extremely close scrutiny of ETS-produced material for general test prep and for critical reading questions. This seems like a marked departure from what the consensus on GRE prep boards like these would have you believe, but it does not necessarily seem like the consensus wisdom is well-suited for help in raising a 164 Q / 170V to a straight 340. While I'm still somewhat hesitant to base a test-prep strategy on the PowerPrep II first exam alone, I've done the "practice problem sets" in the GRE quant book and have been doing fairly well, so I don't think there is a TON of noise in that score. Anyhow, advice appreciated. Thanks for reading!
  8. It would seem like you would have to offer a substantially longer and more sustained response to each of these questions to score above a pretty low grade (around a 2 or so). Especially in the first "evaluate an issue" essay you seem to have a nuanced answer that could very easily sustain a lengthier, fuller, and ultimately better response. It may make sense for you to work on producing such an essay given the time constraints present in the GRE,
  9. Hello GradCafe, Please find my argument essay below. Any attempts at amateur grading or criticism would be much appreciated, as valuating your own essays on something like this is basically impossible. Thank you for your time and energy. "In surveys Mason City residents rank water sports (swimming, boating, and fishing) among their favorite recreational activities. The Mason River flowing through the city is rarely used for these pursuits, however, and the city park department devotes little of its budget to maintaining riverside recreational facilities. For years there have been complaints from residents about the quality of the river's water and the river's smell. In response, the state has recently announced plans to clean up Mason River. Use of the river for water sports is, therefore, sure to increase. The city government should for that reason devote more money in this year's budget to riverside recreational facilities. Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on the assumptions and what the implications are if the assumptions prove unwarranted." The conclusion that the city government should devote more money in its budget to riverside recreational facilities rests on a bevy of assumptions that are at best dubious. According to the memo’s author, the use of the river for recreational activities is “sure to increase” because the state announced plans to clean up the river. Meanwhile, the author says, city residents rank water sports as among their favorite activities and have long complained about the quality of the river water the state is about to clean-up. And they have rarely used the river in the past. These background statements about how much the residents enjoy water activities and how likely they are to use the river as a source of recreation once the state cleans up the river, even if all true, do not necessarily support the conclusion that the city government should devote more resources to riverside recreational facilities. Suppose, generously, that resident use of the river for recreation stands poised to increase once the state cleans up the river. It is possible that private vendors would compete to provide recreation facilities alongside the river. These private facilities, through the forces of competition, may well be better for the residents who wish to recreate in the river than the facilities the government would construct. And these private recreational facilities would not directly cost the city government anything. Hence, even if all the background claims leading up to the conclusion are 100% right, it would be at best hasty to conclude that the city should provide such facilities. The city would be well-advised to study the possibility of private vendors providing these facilities, perhaps by asking the local chamber of commerce whether any of their members would be likely to provide these facilities as river use increased. And even this “private sector first” approach assumes that those who would recreate in the river desire some facility that is at present lacking, which is itself a contestable assumption that could be empirically examined by the city through a survey of its residents. But is not at all clear that recreational use of the river is “sure to increase” based on the evidence presented. Even if residents of Mason City enjoy recreational water activities, they may not regard the river as the best outlet for these aquatic outings. Maybe they enjoy a local water park, a nearby ocean beach, or pools either at shared facilities or in their own backyards. They may well enjoy these outlets for their water recreation so much that they would not substitute even the cleanest of rivers for their place in their recreation schedules. Their complaints about the water’s quality may reflect concerns about the water’s impact on the environment or, in the case of the smell, the degrading effect the water’s quality has on the quality of life of residents regardless of whether they engage in water-based recreation. If this were the case, then the state’s efforts to improve the quality of the river may not necessarily have any impact on the use of the river for recreation. That said, the Mason City government would likely be able to gather information about whether this is the case by appending additional questions on the subject to the survey they distribute to residents. Such questions could ask how residents currently satisfy any desire for water recreation and whether they viewed the river as a viable alternative if it were cleaned up and adequate facilities provided. The validity of the author’s inference that residents necessarily even like water activities to a meaningful extent, however, depends on the specifics of the survey’s question about recreation. And the author notes that the survey asked residents to rank water sports. But the position of water sports in a rank-order depends entirely on what the other options are. Suppose, for instance, that the survey asked participants from a list of: aerobic exercise, weightlifting, or reading. Residents could rank water sports as the first and most preferred activity on that list of four options, but nonetheless spend zero minutes a year engaged in water sports. For instance, residents could prefer drinking wine with friends or going to the movies more than any of those activities. In such a case of a poorly-designed “recreational rank” question, little information about how residents spend their time would actually be gathered from the survey question, since the other options in the rank-order question were not options residents tend to consider when deciding how to spend their time. Meanwhile, even if the question about recreation were well-designed, the validity of any survey data on how residents spend their recreational time depends on how the survey was distributed. If the survey were distributed to a representative sample of city residents, and each question were well-designed, then the inferences would be valid. But if the residents who answered the survey questions were not representative of the city as a whole, then the survey results would likely be spurious. Suppose, for instance, that survey respondents were likely to be retirees who have lots of time on their hands to engage in activities like answering surveys from the city governments. Then the survey results would over-represent retirees and under-represent the rest of the population. If retirees had a disproportionate tendency to, say, go fishing or spending time on boats (as seems plausible), then the survey would overstate the extent to which city residents as a whole spend their time engaged in water sports. As a result, then, the implication that the overall population of the city values water sports as a recreational outlet would not necessarily follow from survey data that at a glance suggests as much. The city’s manager’s conclusion that the city should spend more money on recreational facilities on the riverside depends on many assumptions that may or may not be valid. Even if one grants that each of his background statements and assertions are true, his conclusion does not necessarily follow from them: private facilities may be superior to those of the government and would cost the city government nothing. But even his background statements, based on survey data and their own sets of assumptions, do not necessarily stand on their own. The argument’s pieces are themselves tenuous, as is the argument as a whole
  10. Greetings, Please find below my "analyze an issue" essay and prompt. It is all but impossible to grade your own essay with any semblance of objectivity. So, please evaluate and critique away! Thanks. "A nation should require all of its students to study the same national curriculum until they enter college. Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the recommendation and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, describe specific circumstances in which adopting the recommendation would or would not be advantageous and explain how these examples shape your position." The education of students in high school, before they enter college, remains a topic at once contentious and important in national debates around the world. There should be some common curriculum that every single high school student in a nation covers before they graduate. But the entirety of a student’s education should not be the same as every other student in the nation. Rather, students should study a curriculum that is to some extent specialized based on their individual strengths, in addition to the curriculum shared by all students in the nation. One goal of education in high school should be to produce “good citizens” who are able to contribute to public discussions and to connect with fellow citizens from all walks of life. In the absence of a shared curriculum, studied by all students before they enter college, it would seem difficult to ensure that all high school graduates had this ability to connect with citizens from circumstances different from their own and therefore contribute to public life. Consider, for instance, the case of American history in the United States. Imagine if some students never studied American history before college and never studied American history in college. These students would lack an understanding of the American history that informs America’s public policies and therefore lack an ability to have informed conversation about, say, the merits of the policies proposed by different presidential candidates. Indeed, presidential candidates themselves often allude to American history in their speeches. Such a citizen, lacking any formal education in American history, would be unable to have an informed judgment about the various policies proposed by a candidate. This is a bad outcome. Should this citizen then encounter another citizen who has this background in American history in, say, a bar, then this citizen would be unable to engage in an informed discussion about the historical perspective on current presidential candidates. As a result, American public life and American democracy would suffer because of this individual’s lack of any understanding of American history. Were this “uninformed” individual to have had the same education in American history as the informed individual at the bar, however, these two individuals would be able to have an informed conversation about the historical perspective on the current presidential candidates. Yet education has another purpose beyond the production of “good citizens” from uneducated individuals: helping individuals figure out where in the economy their individual skills will be most valued. The capitalist economies now prevalent in the world depend on a division of labor in order to function. Each worker finds a specific role in which their specific set of strengths add value to the economy, and as a result, the economy as a whole generates substantial value. But this requires individuals to learn what their individual talents are. And this requires high schools to allow students to specialize based on their perceived strengths and weaknesses. If high schools did not allow such specialization, and instead required all students to take the same curriculum, then students would leave high school without much of an idea of what their individual strengths were and therefore where in the economy they could add value. As a result, individuals would leave high school unsure of what to specialize in, and the labor market and the economy for the whole country would suffer. Consider the contrast between an engineer and a police officer. Engineers must know high-level mathematics, beyond even multivariable calculus. A police officer will never need to know anything approaching this level of mathematics in order to do his job successfully. An individual who will one day be an engineer would not know if he is suited for this position unless he took an advanced mathematics courses in high school and excelled in it. But the individual who will later flourish as a police officer would likely flounder in this same advanced mathematics class. To require them both to take the same mathematics courses in high school, therefore, would do a disservice to at least one of the two individuals. If the mathematics course is less sophisticated and amenable to the mathematical disposition of the police officer, then the would-be-engineer will not be challenged and would not know if he has the aptitude to excel as an engineer. Such a policy would turn mathematics classes into the lowest common denominator, forcing the brightest students to not discover their talents in high school. On the other hand, a mathematics course suitable for the future engineer would likely prove difficult for the future police officer. Given that failure or near failure in high school can have consequences for the entirety of a career trajectory, even if the subject at hand is not directly relevant to the job, this “math for future engineers, for all” approach to high school math would unnecessarily penalize future police officers. It may be tempting to think that students can all take the same classes in high school but specialize in college. But this is unrealistic. Students, especially those seeking technical degrees or wishing to enter medical school after graduation, must have at least a crude idea of what classes they will take from the first day they set foot on campus, if they hope to complete their bachelor’s degree in time (at least in the United States). While most of the specialization in education necessary for a specialized labor market to function happens in college rather in high school, a degree of specialization in high school nonetheless remains necessary in order to facilitate this process in college. Many nations demand that high school education fulfill two different purposes. One is that high school education should produce “good citizens” who can connect with fellow citizens and contribute to public life. This requires a shared understanding of certain topics, like history, and therefore requires that all students in a nation’s high schools cover at least some of the same content in their courses. Yet another requirement of high school education is that it help students figure out where their individual strengths will be most valuable in the specialized labor market they will ultimately join when they graduate college. This requires that students specialize in their curriculum in high school, to at least some extent. Hence high school education in a nation should have some elements that are shared by every student in the nation, but also have elements that are not shared by every student in the nation
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