My Experience Taking the Revised GRE

[wildviolet]

I took the Revised GRE today, and my preliminary score ranges were: 670-770 Verbal and 750-800 Quantitative.

After the writing section, I received the first quantitative section. The questions seemed easier compared to the practice questions I had seen in the Princeton Review and Official GRE Prep books. The next section was verbal, which also seemed relatively easy, except for the reading comprehension questions. I had to be very careful because I received several science topics, and since my background is in science, I had to be aware of the influence of my prior knowledge on the topic versus what was actually in the reading passage.

Then, I took advantage of the 10-minute break to get a drink and stretch my legs.

When I returned, I received the second quantitative section, which was much harder than the first one. Thus, I reasoned that I had done fairly well on the first section. There were some very tough questions, which I saved for last and basically guessed on towards the end. The next section was verbal. Again, the second section was much harder than the first one, especially in terms of vocabulary. I was definitely not as sure of my responses and double-checked all my answers.

I think the last section I received was an experimental quantitative section because the time was set for 35 minutes and the questions were very basic and straightforward.

My strategy for both sections was to skip the questions that seemed hard--the "mark" for later feature was an excellent tool for this. On the other hand, you could leave it unanswered, and it will show up as such when you click on the "review" button. For the verbal section, I skipped the reading comprehension questions because I knew they would take more time, and I wanted to get the other question types out of the way first.

I studied on and off for about two months prior to taking the exam. My primary resources were the Princeton Review and Official GRE books and Kaplan's vocabulary cards. However, the vocabulary you will actually see on the exam is very limited. If you are a fluent English speaker, I'm thinking that you can use your knowledge of how the words "feel" or "sound" and be able to select the correct answers. Of course, this is a disadvantage for international students or non-native-English-speakers.

Like others, I am concerned about how the score ranges will translate into actual scores and percentile rankings come November. But, for now I am glad that it's over, I think I did pretty well, and I can focus on other areas of my life again! Good luck to all.

[crater21]

Thanks for this post! It's helpful to hear about someone's experience throughout the test. And, congrats on your scores! Those are really good scores.

Any tips for the quantitative section? That is where I am still a little weak, and find myself constantly running out of time.

[wildviolet]

Hi crater21,

Of the two sections, the quantitative section was more difficult for me, despite the high score! On the practice tests, I was missing lots of questions and my scores were in the 600-700 range. However, as I mentioned in my post, the real test seemed a lot easier than the practice tests. There weren't any difficult geometry, probability, or permutation questions. That doesn't mean that you won't get them on your test, but I didn't see them on mine.

I didn't run out of time, but I certainly used every last second. During the test, I would skip the hard questions by marking them. When I reviewed them again, sometimes they made more sense, and I was more relaxed because I knew I had already taken care of the easy questions. That's one of the key strategies in Princeton Review. Also, I felt like the Princeton Review Math Review was extremely helpful for me. I have a science/math background, so I understood the explanations. Depending on your background, you may need an additional resource that provides better explanations of the concepts. What I needed was a refresher and strategies about how to approach the question types, such as quantitative comparison. I didn't use the Math Review in the Official GRE book.

Also, I used all six pages of the scratch paper they gave me. I would copy the equations or whatever onto my paper and work from there.

When I first began studying for the GRE, I didn't worry about timing. But, the week before the test, I timed myself as I took the practice tests, so I already knew how fast I would have to go to get through all the questions.

Good luck!

[Rachel B]

Thanks for this post! It's helpful to hear about someone's experience throughout the test. And, congrats on your scores! Those are really good scores.

Any tips for the quantitative section? That is where I am still a little weak, and find myself constantly running out of time.

Keep doing practice problems. On practice tests I ran out of time often and it was because I was using the calculator for easy calculations that really consumed time. Remember that you don't need to calculate everything and you can eliminate answers by just looking to see if they fall out of the range of what you're looking for.

Practice might not mean you score 800, but it certainly will help. The first time I took the test I received a Q-score of 540. The second time I received a 680-780, which means I practically doubled my percentile. All I did was buckle down and do problems!

[Mattynabib]

Just to throw in my $0.02, I just took them today, and I found the experience overall to be easier than I expected, though as noted gradually increased in difficulty as the sections progressed.

One of the things that led to my expectation of serious challenge was that I did some of the Magoosh GRE prep course online. On the whole, it seems to be an amazingly good and thorough prep for the revised GRE; I particularly like the fact that after each question they not only give you a solution, but a video showing how they arrived at that solution - brilliant! However, the free selection of questions that they provide pretty much put the fear of god into me... I got just 29% right of 18 quantitative questions! A far cry from the 780 math score I got 18 years ago when I first took the GREs.

However after taking the Princeton and ETS samples I felt a little better... Not nearly as mind-wrenching. I still was pretty nervous though, since - for a variety of reasons - I only realized I needed to take the GREs last week, and I only had 2 real days to study (aka cram). I pulled a lot of great info from the ETS site, but the Math Review guide re-scared me... I barely made it through the first two sections before I was having terrible flashbacks to high school. It's been since 1986 that I've done any real math, and since 1993 that I last took the GREs and had to think about things like polynomials and systems of equations, etc.

So the actual test was not so bad, though I was on unsteady ground a few times, particularly with the math. When all was said and done, I got a preliminary score of 680-780 quant, 690-790 verbal, but I'm not sure what that means and how the writing sections will be factored in to create a final score. From what I can determine from online resources, this translates to a score of about 162-169 under the new scoring system (130-170), which will be more than sufficient for the program to which I am applying.

Am I right in thinking that this session, getting our scores back in Nov., will be the FIRST set of official scores in the new system?

Good luck, all!

Mattynabib

[alicejcw]

Wildviolet, it sounds like you had a very similar experience to mine. I took it last Monday and it went much better than I had expected. I only used Princeton Review to study, and after taking their practice tests the weekend before the test I was very worried about how I would do. I found the quantitative sections to be a bit easier than the practice questions, but they did get harder as the test went on, and the reading comprehension was really hard to do at a quick pace. Although I wish PR had had more practice problem sets, I think their test-taking strategies and straightforward explanations prepared me extremely well, especially for time management. I didn't actually finish any of the math sections, but using the "mark" function and doing the easy problems first helped me enormously.

I think the big difference for me was that during the test I was absolutely certain that I was bombing the math sections and that I would have to retake the test. This turned out to be completely untrue, as my score ranges were V: 710-800 and Q: 700-800. Based on that, my big message to people taking it in the future would be: DON'T STRESS OUT OR GIVE UP DURING THE TEST. Even if you think you're doing badly, even if you don't finish the sections, you're almost certainly doing better than you think!

Mattynabib- We're definitely among the first to get revised scores. The people who took the test in August and September will get them on November 8th and 10th, so we're the third group to get them. Kind of nerve-wracking trying to figure out what the score ranges mean! I hope they give us plenty of information about how the new scores compare to old scores.

[lottesnk]

Does anyone have any tips on what content I should pay special attention to in regards to the quantitative section? The Kaplan prep chapters that give me the most problem are probability, and permutation/combination. But I don't want to put all my energy and time into material that will only have 2 questions at most.

Is there a bulk of GRE Q material in geometry, algebra, or arithmetic? I'd appreciate any feedback. Thanks!

[habanero]

I made sure to review perm/comb and there wasn't a single question about it on my test! The bulk of mine was definitely algebra. There was very little geometry. There was a surprising amount of statistics.