Palatial

I felt as though the kaplan cat's were closer to the real thing than either princeton review or any other cat I took (barrons etc.) But nothing beats powerprep. The scores I got on my kaplan cats were closest to my actual gre score, but the powerprep questions and style were, at least for me, dramatically more similar to the actual gre i took. If you're happy with your kaplan scores, I'd take that as a plus. Good luck on your exam!

Mm i'd have to disagree. If you're getting numeric entry questions etc...then you're probably using the powerprep II software. You should not see any of the new type of questions on any tests before the official change next august (they're all over the experimental sections however). They don't explicitly state this, but I'm pretty confident that there won't be since I've recently taken the exam. As for your powerprep issue, I'm willing to bet you accidentally downloaded the new powerprep II software. The old one is still on the ets website, you're probably just looking in the wrong place. I found a powerprep for the new one and a separate one for the old one, just make sure you're getting the old one. Best of luck on your exam!

I'm pretty sure it's not 'graded' mostly on length, merely a correlation between length and better grades. I read the Princeton Review 2010 and I remember them saying something similar. I'm sure it's because if you're better prepared, you're going to be capable of writing much more. So in that sense, length = better score. I wouldn't worry at all about length, maybe focus more on amount of paragraphs, which should be about 5.

I just took the gre this afternoon and the 3rd section was clearly identified as experimental and was an essay. I agree with csquare, they probably phased out unidentified sections entirely which I feel is a great relief for current test takers. Best of luck to those taking it soon.