Revised GRE

[Phillrodrigues79]

Hello everyone,

I took the new GRE on august 8th. I spent 2 months studying with Princetons review's "cracking the new GRE" and Kaplan's New GRE Premier and workbooks. All prep tests I took showed a Verbal score of 550 to 650 and Quant from 730-800. So I figured my score range was pretty much set. (Needless to say I was worried because all the Phd programs in Management Sciences say they want people from 75th percentile and above.

So came the test. Analytical writting and quant were pretty much the way the Kaplan tests had. To my surprise, Verbal was a lot harder. To make it even weirder, the preliminary results were:

Verbal: 640-740 (92 to 99th percentile) !?!?!?!?!?!?

Quant 730-800 (75 to 94th percentile)

I'm not complaining at all. Just saying that something strange happened as the practice tests seemed easier and I had low scores, and so came the real deal and the test was harder and I got pretty good scores....go figure...

Anyway, 4+ hours of testing truly gets to you. I was exhausted.

Best of luck to the future test-takers.

[orst11]

I think not knowing the actual scores is better. I would be looking at too many schools and I wouldn't be able to add detail to my SOP. Plus, I already spent 4+ hours taking the test, I truthfully don't want to think about it for a long time, and I actually did fairly well on test if that tells you anything.

Also, since you get to send the score to 4 programs I sent them to the programs that have the earliest deadline. I can worry about sending more scores in November to programs with later deadlines.

[sollee]

I plan to take GRE in the last week of September and its only now that I have woken up to it. Do you guys think its manageable to practice for it within two months to get a decent score? Which will be the best books or sources to begin with?

It depends on what kind of test taker you are, I think. I studied for about five hours total using the new Princeton Review book and the PowerPrep software and I scored between a 1430-1600 according to the score range they gave me at the end. I am naturally good at standardized tests and very comfortable with vocabulary (basic math was what I really needed to review) and could probably have done better if I'd really focused on it, but that wasn't what I wanted to do with my free time... all of which is to say, you know yourself best. My advice in general is for people to not overthink it - basic preparation seems to be able to improve your pre-studying score by about 200 points but after that you're just running in circles, and aside from hitting a decent score there are much more important components of your application to worry about.

Edited August 15, 2011 by sollee

[rainy_day]

Hey all, I just took my test yesterday. I was such a panicky mess over it that I almost didn't go, but I rallied and got a 710-800 range for verbal! So have a bit of faith in yourself; that's my biggest advice.

Some advice: for the verbal, it might be a good idea to familiarize yourself with some science writing. A lot of the reading comp was a scientific-style text, and i imagine most verbal focused focus aren't as used to this writing style.

I don't think memorizing words will be that helpful, but looking at roots, prefixes, etc and trying to breakdown the meaning of words will probably come in handy. The real trick is being able to use context to determine words and word meaning. This is what you already do every day! So pay attention to how you use those skills, and you'll do great on the day of.

I really wish I had spent 30 mins reviewing some common, basic math concepts. Math is really not relevant for my programs, but if I had reviewed some basic stuff (formula for area of a triangle, the different types of averages) the whole math section would have been so much easier, and I think that would have made the test as a whole less exhausting, allowing me to be better focused in the verbal sections, where it really mattered.

[Astarabadi]

Hi,

just to share my experience with the materials available out there:

Princeton Review and Barrons seems to be the best. PR has good techniques, so I purchased "Cracking the new GRE" and also "1,014 Questions" Both are tonk books, and seem to be helpful. Its another story that my math sucks and my verbal is pretty good. But I have already spent a month, and plan to take the GREs in late September (first try, will be after almost 3 months of studying). Lets see how that goes!

Also, practicing with PowerPrep is OK, I prefer to use the PR cds and online tests which are the best practice tests.