Pros and Cons of the Revised GRE - Please share your opinions!

[bluejay16]

Hey, just curious about the revised GRE because I'll be taking it in two weeks.

How was it like to take it as an adaptive test by section?

Did skipping hard questions and then returning to them later help with completing the sections?

In particular, I really hate the 'select all that apply' type questions. Did any of these questions seem more or less difficult to answer because of the variety of answers?

Hopefully you can share a bit on your experience with taking the revised GRE.

Thanks in advance!

[Kitkat]

I feel like it was easier for me, mainly because I *could* go and skip the harder questions first. Even though I didn't use it much, I did use it some and it gave me a lot of piece of mind. Mainly I skipped through the hard ones, and when I went back I felt like I had more time to work on those, and didn't stress out on later easy ones because of the time issue. Which I think is what happened to be the first time.

The times I really disliked that 'select all that apply' was in the verbal section, with the reading passages. With those I didn't find it harder to answer, just more time consuming. Really all of the answers were in the passage, it was just a matter of finding them.

In the quant section, the questions that got me the most were the ones that you had to fill in yourself.

I was rather glad that they got rid of antonyms and analogies, but they have basically replaced it with synonyms in the sentence completion. And the sentence completions are harder because of the more words that you have to use, and if you get one wrong even out of the blanks, you lose that question.

Edited September 12, 2011 by Kitkat

[orst11]

The first question I think you would get a better answer from a person who has taken both the old and revised gre. Really I don't think you really notice a huge change in the questions where they simply get easier or harder though.

I typically tried to do the verbal questions in a particular order, for instance I did the reading comprehension first followed by the other type of questions. typically this helped me complete these sections with time to check answers even if they were wrong and I thought they were right, LOL. As far as the math, I just simply did question by question because math is more my forte. I definitely had enough time to check all the questions.

I think of all the questions on the test, the hardest ones are the select a variety of answer questions. Some of the questions will list 3 answers you may think the answer would be but you can only select two or simply get the question wrong. I think the problem ETS is having with various people questioning the legitimacy and accuracy of the test is often based on these questions, even if there are not that many on the test.

Also, just be aware you may get a research section on the test and don't simply figure since it's the last section it is not scored, because you could easily be wrong.

The only recommendation I think a lot of us can give you about taking the test is to budget your time. If you are stuck on a question, skip it and come back to it. If you end up skipping half the questions then obviously it's going to be more difficult if you go into the test thinking you will do well you may be surprised that you are hardly skipping questions and then coming back to them.

[bluejay16]

Thanks Kitkat for sharing. Did you have a particular strategy for getting through the reading comprehension questions quickly? I usually find myself taking too long trying to qualify answers with evidence before choosing my final answer.

And to orst11, I think it's interesting that you tried to do the verbal questions according to type. Would you say that helped increase your verbal score?

[kolja00]

I started studying last year for the old GRE and never got around to actually taking it, but even just looking through guide books, the old GRE verbal seems a lot harder. The Math is exactly the same.

[Kitkat]

Thanks Kitkat for sharing. Did you have a particular strategy for getting through the reading comprehension questions quickly? I usually find myself taking too long trying to qualify answers with evidence before choosing my final answer.

And to orst11, I think it's interesting that you tried to do the verbal questions according to type. Would you say that helped increase your verbal score?

I did something similar to orst11, but for the most part left the reading comp for the end, unless they were small one question type reading comps.

I did it this way mainly for my timing of it. How I actually got through the reading comps was first to do a quick skimming of the passage to see what was what in it. Then I looked at the first question, figured out what part of the passage was in and go through that part fairly closely. If there were more questions for that passage, I didn't bother to reread it for each question, but found the section that I needed, and focused on that part. If I was having a hard time with a question, I just skipped it and went back to it later. That actually was a good thing for several of the questions, because I was starting to zone out on them.

[sequi001]

I took the former GRE test last year and the revised version today (!), and as an international student whose native language is not English, I would say that the verbal part in the revised GRE is easier because they removed the analogies and antonyms, which to me, were impossible. I can read and understand a text in English very well; if it contains unknown words, I can guess their meaning, whereas with antonyms and analogies, I would get stuck with unknown terms with no context to help me figure out their meaning. So I would say that in my opinion, the new verbal section makes more sense. I would still advise to increase your vocabulary, it can only help and represents the most efficient way to improve your verbal score.

I found the math section very similar in both versions of the test. You just have to be more careful when you are asked to type your answer or when you can have multiple right answers. But overall, it feels the same.

To give you an idea, with the old GRE I got V:510, Q:680

with the new GRE : V:580-680, Q:720-800

Good luck to you!

[fullofpink]

I've taken the old (over 2 years ago, didn't study and scored dismally) and the new (studied, practiced and did pretty well). I think the new test is much better - more intuitive. I constantly used the "Mark"/"Review" categories on the test. If the question wasn't particularly difficult, but I didn't want to spend too much time on it, I would select my best guess and return to it if I had time at the end. There were very few questions that I opted not to answer (like, a very complicated math question with a fill-in-the-blank answer), that I'd mark to return to and did.

Being able to mark questions also helped me realize what I was having difficulty with. One of the issues I faced was that my reading comp passages were VERY long and VERY convoluted, or there were two equally good selections in one of the context-questions for the Verbal. Overall, I thought the testing situation went much better.

The antonyms and synonyms were the worst part, really, of the old test. Being given a context to select a synoym made that process a LOT easier. Also, someone here suggested that you put like words in categories. My Kaplan study book did it for me, so I found that if I knew the generic meaning of a phrase (if the word that needed to slip in could be equivalent to "boring" or "disastrous" or "sad"), I really didn't need to know the DEFINITION of the words available - just the meaning. I feel like this helped me out tremendously.

I think the worst part of the new test is now having two writing sections with less time for each. However, I'm a bit of a radical about this because for me, I don't really need this score at all (I've published multiple times and my applications require a writing sample), and I fail to see why any adcom would consider if they would review my application (though I am aware that in some cases, they look at the GRE to weed out applicants first - I'm not sure how much leverage the AW holds with that process).

The math on the new test was much more difficult than the practice tests (Powerprep and Kaplan), but it's not impossible to figure out if you allot yourself a bit more time. Just a slight warning, lol.

[bluejay16]

Whew! Thanks everyone for your input. I'm taking my exam tomorrow and reading your test strategies and insights are helping me feel more confident about taking it in the revised format. Hopefully, it will go better than my previous experience. Last time I took the exam, there was a woman sitting next to me who typed and erased answers on her papers incredibly loud, which irritated me to the point of losing focus haha!

[Atkum]

Whew! Thanks everyone for your input. I'm taking my exam tomorrow and reading your test strategies and insights are helping me feel more confident about taking it in the revised format. Hopefully, it will go better than my previous experience. Last time I took the exam, there was a woman sitting next to me who typed and erased answers on her papers incredibly loud, which irritated me to the point of losing focus haha!

Janomaly,

Could you share what your experience was like taking the new test. Hope it went well for you.

[orst11]

And to orst11, I think it's interesting that you tried to do the verbal questions according to type. Would you say that helped increase your verbal score?

I completely forgot to reply to your question, so I apologize for it taking me awhile but hopefully maybe this will help others. I mainly did this because I knew my strengths when it came to the verbal and knew my weaknesses. I think it helped both with time and my score. I still did lower than powerprep estimated my score to be, but I think that was because of nerves. I hope the test went well for you.

[bluejay16]

Janomaly,

Could you share what your experience was like taking the new test. Hope it went well for you.

The AWA section was comparable to prompts on the ETS website and the Princeton Review and McGraw Hill study books. If you practice writing within 20 minutes, that gives you 5 minutes to brainstorm beforehand and 5 minutes to edit after writing. I actually wound up with 7 minutes of editing time for my argument essay.

The Verbal sections had at least 3 different reading comp stories and their questions were mainly about author's tone, intent, or inferences from the passage. I took the advice from this forum and skipped other types of questions to do the reading comp ones first. That made it easier to complete the questions in time.

The Math sections were mainly algebra. I had very few questions on geometry and stats, although I was surprised to see one question that asked me to calculate SD for a set of numbers and another question that asked me to calculate volume for a pyramid. The calculator was also helpful although I did notice that sometimes the number would not show up on the calculator after clicking on it. So I'd have to clear the calculator a few times and slowly click the numbers to make sure I wouldn't make a calculation mistake.

I surprisingly did not receive any 'select the correct sentence' reading comp questions and I only received a few 'select all that apply' type questions for both verbal and quantitative.

Hope this gives you a good idea of what to expect.

I completely forgot to reply to your question, so I apologize for it taking me awhile but hopefully maybe this will help others. I mainly did this because I knew my strengths when it came to the verbal and knew my weaknesses. I think it helped both with time and my score. I still did lower than powerprep estimated my score to be, but I think that was because of nerves. I hope the test went well for you.

Thanks for the tip. I took your advice and did the same. It was definitely helpful but I ended up with a lower score range than expected too. I also think it was because of nerves during my first verbal section. By the time I took the quantitative section and the second verbal section, I felt more confident but it seemed that my second verbal section had reached a cap on difficulty level and the questions felt too easy. I was sad to see that my verbal score was pretty similar to my verbal score from last year, even though I studied almost three times longer and exceptionally harder than last year.

[nilnawk]

I just took the revised GRE, and I found it to be a relatively comfortable exam.

The analytical writing was pretty straightforward. I only practiced writing four analytical essays in the days before the exam, but I felt that was sufficient.

The quantitative sections included a fairly balanced mixture of very simple and very challenging questions. General piece of advice that I found to be very helpful on the quantitative sections: if the obvious approach to a challenging question seems too complicated or involves too many calculations, there's probably a simpler but less obvious approach to solving the question. Also, it's definitely good to know the special triangles by heart (i.e., 3:4:5 right triangles, 30:60:90 triangles, etc).

I found most of the verbal sections to be pretty straightforward. As a part of my preparation, I had marked all the unfamiliar words I found in my GRE books, and I committed the definitions of those words to memory. I encountered many of those same words during the verbal sections of the actual exam. I would definitely encourage test-takers to study any unfamiliar words encountered in GRE study books, since being able to answer many of the GRE verbal questions is contingent upon knowing the vocabulary in the questions.

Being able to mark questions and come back to them later definitely helped. For the most part, I skipped all the data analysis and reading comprehension questions on my first pass, then came back to those question after answering everything else. I also tended to skip multiple answer choice types of questions on the first pass. Being able to come back to questions later definitely made me feel more comfortable in terms of time management.

I don't think ETS has collected enough data on the new exam yet to provide reliable score estimates, but the score ranges I received at the end of the test were 700-800 verbal, and 750-800 quant.

I prepared for the new GRE using the latest ETS, Barron's, and Kaplan books. The ETS book was good for practice questions and generally familiarizing test takers with the test format, but it doesn't really explain answers to questions. The Barron's and Kaplan books both had plenty of questions and provided some pretty good explanations and tips, but overall, I found the Barron's book to be more challenging and helpful.

[Atkum]

I just took the revised GRE, and I found it to be a relatively comfortable exam.

The analytical writing was pretty straightforward. I only practiced writing four analytical essays in the days before the exam, but I felt that was sufficient.

The quantitative sections included a fairly balanced mixture of very simple and very challenging questions. General piece of advice that I found to be very helpful on the quantitative sections: if the obvious approach to a challenging question seems too complicated or involves too many calculations, there's probably a simpler but less obvious approach to solving the question. Also, it's definitely good to know the special triangles by heart (i.e., 3:4:5 right triangles, 30:60:90 triangles, etc).

I found most of the verbal sections to be pretty straightforward. As a part of my preparation, I had marked all the unfamiliar words I found in my GRE books, and I committed the definitions of those words to memory. I encountered many of those same words during the verbal sections of the actual exam. I would definitely encourage test-takers to study any unfamiliar words encountered in GRE study books, since being able to answer many of the GRE verbal questions is contingent upon knowing the vocabulary in the questions.

Being able to mark questions and come back to them later definitely helped. For the most part, I skipped all the data analysis and reading comprehension questions on my first pass, then came back to those question after answering everything else. I also tended to skip multiple answer choice types of questions on the first pass. Being able to come back to questions later definitely made me feel more comfortable in terms of time management.

I don't think ETS has collected enough data on the new exam yet to provide reliable score estimates, but the score ranges I received at the end of the test were 700-800 verbal, and 750-800 quant.

I prepared for the new GRE using the latest ETS, Barron's, and Kaplan books. The ETS book was good for practice questions and generally familiarizing test takers with the test format, but it doesn't really explain answers to questions. The Barron's and Kaplan books both had plenty of questions and provided some pretty good explanations and tips, but overall, I found the Barron's book to be more challenging and helpful.

Nilnawk,

Could you tell us more about your preparation as far as vocabulary is concerned.

[nilnawk]

Nilnawk,

Could you tell us more about your preparation as far as vocabulary is concerned.

Atkum,

I worked through the ETS, Barron's, and Kaplan practice questions and practice exams. Each time I encountered a word I didn't recognize, I marked it down. I then copied each of those words to an excel spreadsheet, searched for the definitions for those words, and eventually converted the words with the definitions into digital flashcards using quizlet.com. I just studied those words repeatedly in the days before my actual exam. I saw a number of those words come up in my actual verbal exam. Knowing the meanings of those words definitely made the difference between making a well-informed selection versus a wild guess on a number of questions.

As for the reading comprehension, I simply practiced with the reading comprehension problems in my practice books over and over. There are definitely certain patterns to the reading comprehension questions that become discernible after practicing enough.