Yikes! I just bombed the GRE...

[violinist21]

So I just got back from the test center and I am incredibly upset.

Quantitative 157 and verbal 154. I'm not too concerned with the verbal because I'm going into BME and English is not my first language (though I know its very very low to get accepted into any good programs....)

But for the quantitative I am very disappointed. It is 71 percentile, when I need to be aiming for at least 88% from what I've read. I am still wondering what happened because math tends to be one my strongest suits...

I found myself not being confident in most of the answers I was submitting, rushing through problems and even running out of time on the last 3-4 questions in each math section. And the bigger issue is I cannot identify a single area that I have problems with so that I can study that in depth. I have a very strong math background coming from an engineering degree and I really thought I did much better than this in a practice exam I took 2 months ago.

Granted, I didn't study much before the test, I only looked over a review guide quickly. But I am pretty sure I know the conceptsthat they cover, its just a matter of being able to learn the tricks of this particular exam - how to choose the quickest approach and not fumble around.

Any suggestions on how to prepare for the next time I take the GRE considering how bad this time went?

Thanks

Edited September 8, 2012 by violinist21

[Azarashi1]

I don't know if this can help you, but I am a psychology student in Europe (which means, if you don't know how our school system works, that I haven't had anything to do with math for the past 5 plus years beacause we only take major related subjects). When I approached the gre I could barely multiply fractions (not kidding). I used the official ETS guide and the princeton book with 1014 questions and the "cracking the gre". In the end I got 159 (which is probably still lower than what you're aiming at, but for me-being me-is stellar).

I think that if you use any books I used to practice I will do more than fine next time:)!!

[iowaguy]

^{Granted, I didn't study much before the test,}

^{I think you've already answered your question, no?}

Edited September 8, 2012 by iowaguy

[chaetzli]

I just found Princeton's GRE statistics:

http://www.princeton.edu/pub/profile/admission/graduate/

One shouldn't underestimate the importance of the verbal score

Engineering 158 161 160

(applicants/admitted/enrolled)

[violinist21]

Thank you for your replies everyone.

So my biggest question was, do you have any suggestions on HOW to study effectively to get my score up considering that I am confident when I say that I already know the concepts behind all the questions (a.k.a there's nothing new to LEARN per sei) but am unable to solve them in that rushed environment?

[pemdas]

Thank you for your replies everyone.

So my biggest question was, do you have any suggestions on HOW to study effectively to get my score up considering that I am confident when I say that I already know the concepts behind all the questions (a.k.a there's nothing new to LEARN per sei) but am unable to solve them in that rushed environment?

you need flexibility in approaching GRE math

all you have to do now is to set back and relax - don't worry about your score

take a break, like three days, then find some good practice source and start solving questions for the quant section. I recommend GRE math bible by nova, as the book is old and was uploaded many times on the net you can try downloading this for education purposes (only! Keep abreast of @ and don't disseminate the source). Do each question on the paper, be patient and honestly tell yourself how much time you spent and why. If your timing was under 2 min-s, that' ok. If you exceeded 2 min-s blow the alarm and read official explanation from the book. After you read and understood the book explanation - devise the similar question with your own supplied data. Post this question on forum(s) if the difficulty level was hard and see how others solve the question. Copy-paste the same question from your book - the one you solved wrong - to another space and review one week before your exam. You must be able to recognize your own weaknesses and manage to fix them. The process I just described here is called learning on mistakes or analytical approach to studying a subject. It works for both GMAT and GRE.

[APOCooter]

Go through one of the prep guides and do the practice problems. Just because you know the material doesn't mean you know how to answer the questions quickly. I took an intro chemistry course a few semesters ago; I'm confident that I could do well enough on a test of the material, but not necessarily very fast. On a lot of the problems I'd be like, "Do I do it this way? No, that answer doesn't make sense. It's probably this way. *thinks for a few minutes* aha! I remember now!"

[violinist21]

I shall follow your suggestions. Thank you!

And APOcooter - I completely relate. I have my own techniques for things like factoring for example, and they work, but they take way too long compares to the pace of GRE.

this stuff is so trivial compared to the advanced calc that I have learned in recent years, so I feel really dumb for getting questions wrong...