when to take the GRE

[Timshel]

I actually think that I will be taking it in two weeks, too. That is the plan anyway. I should double check and actually schedule it. I'm freaking out. I need to increase my score or I'm not even going to bother applying.

[lolopixie]

I really wanted to take it at half price! Now I'm upset that I didn't schedule it earlier so I could get a date I wanted. I have 2 friends that are retaking it and wanted September too, texted them to let them know they may be needing to take some time off work. Luckily, the time slot available is 4pm. I'm a morning person, but this will give me extra time to study that vocab!

OH, and I read in the study guide you can now use calculators for the math part?? Is that true? And do you bring your own? Or do they give you one there?

Edited August 28, 2011 by lolopixie

[bdon19]

I really wanted to take it at half price! Now I'm upset that I didn't schedule it earlier so I could get a date I wanted. I have 2 friends that are retaking it and wanted September too, texted them to let them know they may be needing to take some time off work. Luckily, the time slot available is 4pm. I'm a morning person, but this will give me extra time to study that vocab!

OH, and I read in the study guide you can now use calculators for the math part?? Is that true? And do you bring your own? Or do they give you one there?

It's an on-screen calculator. A little obnoxious, but probably saved my life. A lot of people seem to think that the calculator is a waste of time on many problems, but I used it on almost every one. I (surprisingly) did fairly well on the math, and I know without a calculator I surely would have bombed it!. Though I did run out of time on both of the sections, it was only on one problem each time.

As far as having only a short time to prepare, the same thing happened to me. I planned on taking it the Saturday before I went back to school (which would have been this coming Saturday) but instead ended up taking it last Monday. I had only about a week and a half to prepare (opposed to over 3 like I thought I would), but honestly I preferred it that way. I don't really see the point in hardcore studying for a test like this. I practically lived at Starbucks for that week and a half, going through practice test after practice test. I studied math to some extent, but I don't think it's worth it memorizing tons of vocab and such. Personally, it was more valuable to familiarize myself with the kinds of questions on the test and how to approach each one. This saved me some valuable time on the test day. Most of the vocab stuff you end up getting on the revised version isn't very obscure (I literally had one question that had me identify which preposition was more appropriate...the options were like "on," "at," or "in" or something like that) but stuff you're supposed to answer via context clues. Sure, they're not all easy, but they're also not anything you can put on a flashcard in many cases. Unless you're really worried about vocab, don't bother spending your short amount of study time memorizing obscure words. You'll get maybe 10 of them, at best.

Just my $0.02. Of course, everyone's study methods are different, but this is what worked best for me! Now, the subject test...that's another story. I have flashcards galore!

[lolopixie]

I'm suprised to hear that there was a question asking to identify the preposition. That makes me feel a wee bit better, but I will still be doing all the prep work. I'm not going to risk it

[bdon19]

Yep. I can't say that the options were exactly those that I listed earlier. Actually, I think the identification for that one was even easier! There are a lot of no-brainer type answers in the vocab area of the verbal. What might be more valuable is practicing the reading comprehension questions to know the tricks they tend to use. Those are so much more complicated and time consuming!

Also, if you're not doing superbly on your practice tests, don't freak out entirely. The Princeton Review ones were really hard for me, and I did much better on the actual exam! I thought Kaplan was fairly good, and the PowerPrep was what it was. I couldn't tell you how I did on that because I had so many computer issues with the software that I kept needing to restart it. But I definitely did much better in both sections than the Princeton Review practice tests were predicting! So take your practice for what it is--practice--but take the score it gives you with a grain of salt. Be warned also that Princeton Review's books are riddled with errors. Meh.