Roger Van Dijk

This is my GRE story. I was applying for admission to Columbia University in their Master's programme in Political Science. The admissions office told me that I needed a Quantitative score of at least 750 to be eligible for consideration. It looked as if the school did not have a specific minimum for verbal or AWA scores. (1) I took the GRE exam twice: once in October 2008 and again in December 2008, all after studying on my own. Worked through Kaplan and ETS guide for GRE prep. (2) My scores from October 2008 GRE's are; AWA 4.5; Verbal 630; Quant: 670. Not good enough for admission to Columbia. So, registered again to take the GRE in December 2008. (3) My scores from December 2008 GRE's are: AWA 4.5; Verbal 650; Quant: 660. At this point, I was frustrated. (4) Self study is not working for me in terms of helping me achieve the target score of 750 in maths. Did some research on the Internet and enrolling in Mlic's GRE turboprep class in London. Soon after enrolling, I received a file dump, with all sorts of study materials and tests. Called the Mlic company in desperation and asked for guidance on how to proceed. (5) I explained my situation and said that I was going to just focus on the AWA score and the Quant score going forward. I was asked to prep through the essays file and the mathematics preprogramme assignment file. (6) The company gives you a terrific template for the argument essays but merely suggests that you create two different perspectives for the issue essay. I worked on 6 essays and turned them in before the start of in-class training. (7) Worked through the quant assignment file which covered some really great stuff in algebra, statistics, and gave me amazing strategies for working on quantitative comparison section. In hindsight, it was probably the comparison problems that let me down. I was beginning to get some new insights into how to approach this section. Was that the missing link? I could not wait to attend the classroom training. (8) The Mlic classroom training quickly escalated to high difficulty levels of GRE math and covered sections that I had not seen in other books. Sequences, arithmetic progression, cool problems in exponents and geometry, and all the drilling in comparison problems. (9) I was required to take the GRE's again within 30 days of finishing the training in December. So, I got a GRE date in January 2009, and took the test. At the end of the day, when I asked for my score report, my quant score was 770. I could not believe it. I had skipped the verbal sections (I received two sections, one obviously not scored). (10) I waited for the official score to arrive to confirm my quant score. My official score report read: AWA 5.0; Quant: 770; Verbal; -- (11) I applied to Columbia with the new maths scores and was accepted. (12) So, I am thankful to Mlic for a great GRE course. I could not have made 770 in maths without Mlic course.