If you basically winged it (gre prep), how did you do?

[victorydance]

I took the old test and studied about two weeks, which consisted of doing practice tests from the Kaplan book and the CD they send you. Got a 800Q,720V (168 scaled ) and a 4.5. Don't really think you need to study a ton of vocab words, the majority of the words they use are not difficult. In my opinion the verbal was more of a reasoning test

 

I disagree. It is a reasoning test, but the tools you need are a strong vocab (more specifically, a strong vocab in the words they use). About 90% of the questions are dependent on vocab words.

 

The words aren't 'difficult' but many of them don't come up in conversation or typical literature, so they can be tricky or unknown when taking the test.

[StatPhD2014]

I disagree. It is a reasoning test, but the tools you need are a strong vocab (more specifically, a strong vocab in the words they use). About 90% of the questions are dependent on vocab words.

 

The words aren't 'difficult' but many of them don't come up in conversation or typical literature, so they can be tricky or unknown when taking the test.

I disagree many of the sentence completions and analogies used words that should be familiar to college educated adults. Most of the difficulty in the sentence completions come from the structure of the sentence and not the words themselves. Also about 33% of the test is reading comprehension and vocab is not a factor there

[adlittle]

I bought a book and read a few words and one essay. The only thing that was helpful that I didn't know was a suggestion to use real life statistics in a persuasive argument. It was an essay about education and I mentioned that the world literacy rate of 1970 vs today. Apparently that's helpful. Of course you don't want to make stuff up, but you might get a chance to use some trivia!

My scores were 150 Q/162 V/5.5 written.

[victorydance]

I disagree many of the sentence completions and analogies used words that should be familiar to college educated adults. Most of the difficulty in the sentence completions come from the structure of the sentence and not the words themselves. Also about 33% of the test is reading comprehension and vocab is not a factor there

 

You may have a great vocabulary so that you can wing it, but most don't. Some of the 100 words most commonly found on the GRE include:

 

petulant, mirth, tyro, wan, heretic, calisthenics, efface, extol, taciturn, torpid, wile, ect.

 

Those aren't really words that 'should be familiar to college educated adults.' I come from a heavy reading major and speak 3 languages but there are a number of words that come up on the GRE that I do not know, or haven't even heard of.

 

The GRE purposely picks words that are not familiar to college educated adults. Why does every single GRE resource out there suggest to study vocab? Because they know it is the easiest way to up your verbal score and is often a GRE-taker's biggest verbal section weakness.

 

If you don't know the words, then sentence completion becomes a guessing game which will drastically reduce your scores, same with all the other types of questions like sentence equivalence. Vocab is a factor in reading comprehension, albeit a smaller one, but if you can't understand the words and quickly you will do poorly there as well.

[geographyrocks]

You may have a great vocabulary so that you can wing it, but most don't. Some of the 100 words most commonly found on the GRE include:

 

petulant, mirth, tyro, wan, heretic, calisthenics, efface, extol, taciturn, torpid, wile, ect.

 

Those aren't really words that 'should be familiar to college educated adults.' I come from a heavy reading major and speak 3 languages but there are a number of words that come up on the GRE that I do not know, or haven't even heard of.

 

The GRE purposely picks words that are not familiar to college educated adults. Why does every single GRE resource out there suggest to study vocab? Because they know it is the easiest way to up your verbal score and is often a GRE-taker's biggest verbal section weakness.

 

If you don't know the words, then sentence completion becomes a guessing game which will drastically reduce your scores, same with all the other types of questions like sentence equivalence. Vocab is a factor in reading comprehension, albeit a smaller one, but if you can't understand the words and quickly you will do poorly there as well.

I completely agree.

I also want to point out that a lot of GRE words are commonly used incorrectly in media and texts.  Vocab is also one of these easiest things to study.  I don't know why anyone would try to argue against studying for it. 

Edited March 10, 2014 by geographyrocks

[StatPhD2014]

You may have a great vocabulary so that you can wing it, but most don't. Some of the 100 words most commonly found on the GRE include:

 

petulant, mirth, tyro, wan, heretic, calisthenics, efface, extol, taciturn, torpid, wile, ect.

 

Those aren't really words that 'should be familiar to college educated adults.' I come from a heavy reading major and speak 3 languages but there are a number of words that come up on the GRE that I do not know, or haven't even heard of.

 

The GRE purposely picks words that are not familiar to college educated adults. Why does every single GRE resource out there suggest to study vocab? Because they know it is the easiest way to up your verbal score and is often a GRE-taker's biggest verbal section weakness.

 

If you don't know the words, then sentence completion becomes a guessing game which will drastically reduce your scores, same with all the other types of questions like sentence equivalence. Vocab is a factor in reading comprehension, albeit a smaller one, but if you can't understand the words and quickly you will do poorly there as well.

Come on half of those words are not difficult at all, for example "heretic", do people really not know what that means by the time they graduate from college. These guides suggest to study vocab words because it is an easy way to improve your score, i am not saying that it doesnt improve. Just that you can still get a great score with an above average vocab especially since so many international students take the test, american students already have a huge advantage there in terms of percentiles. If you have great reasoning skills an average vocab will be sufficient for this test, if not then studying vocab words will be necessary. The reading comprehension should be accesible to most domestic students not really any difficult words there.

 

Also only a small percentage of sentence completion and equivalence questions have words that are unreasonable, luckily the verbal section has a long tail. For example a 720 when i took it was in the 98th percentile, so you can still get a good amount of questions wrong (as compared to the quantitative section where the scoring is a lot more unforgiving). Now if you are scoring in the middle or towards the upper middle getting those tough vocab questions correct will definitely improve your score, but given the way the scoring works you can get those wrong and get all the reasoning questions correct and end up with a great score

Edited March 10, 2014 by StatPhD2014

[victorydance]

They were examples of relatively obscure words of the most common words that come up on the test. There are more obscure words that come up less frequently, particularly if you do well on your first verbal section.

 

We get it, you (think you) are some kind of vocab whiz. 

 

But to state that there is no point in studying vocab if you have an 'above average' vocabulary (however you measure that is anyone's guess) is just plain bad advice for future test takers.

[StatPhD2014]

They were examples of relatively obscure words of the most common words that come up on the test. There are more obscure words that come up less frequently, particularly if you do well on your first verbal section.

 

We get it, you (think you) are some kind of vocab whiz. 

 

But to state that there is no point in studying vocab if you have an 'above average' vocabulary (however you measure that is anyone's guess) is just plain bad advice for future test takers.

Well this discussion took a negative turn no reason why we cant have a reasonable discussion on what the GRE verbal measures. I was never telling future test takers they shouldn't study vocab my previous post makes that clear. As to the comment about being a vocab whiz, my entire argument is that you dont need to be one, there are many ways to get a great score due to the long tail on the verbal score (as my previous post indicates), having a great vocab is just one of them. But anyways if anyone else wants to have a reasonable discussion about the GRE measures im all for it, or whether knowing a ton of vocab words is neccesary to get a good score i would love to hear alternative viewpoints.

Edited March 10, 2014 by StatPhD2014

[NothingButTheRain]

You may have a great vocabulary so that you can wing it, but most don't. Some of the 100 words most commonly found on the GRE include:

 

petulant, mirth, tyro, wan, heretic, calisthenics, efface, extol, taciturn, torpid, wile, ect.

 

I saw (and could correctly use) more than half of those when I was in middle school.  if you're looking for obscure GRE words (and there are some out there), your list is an oddly-developed one.

 

As far as studying for vocab... it's just like any other subject: you have to do what works for you.  Don't over-think it.  Look at the lists.  If you know the vast majority of the words on there, keep moving.  If you don't, then you know what you need to work on.

[victorydance]

I saw (and could correctly use) more than half of those when I was in middle school.  if you're looking for obscure GRE words (and there are some out there), your list is an oddly-developed one.

 

As far as studying for vocab... it's just like any other subject: you have to do what works for you.  Don't over-think it.  Look at the lists.  If you know the vast majority of the words on there, keep moving.  If you don't, then you know what you need to work on.

 

As I said in the next post, those words were from a list of the 100 most used words on the test. My point was to show that even among the most commonly used words, there are some obscure ones. I did not attempt to make a list of the 'most obscure words on the GRE.'

 

I prefer to pile in 500 of the most common words that I don't know perfectly into Anki and do 30 or so words every morning. It's less time consuming and very systematic. 

[themmases]

I didn't study for my first GRE a few years ago, did study for my recent one in October (but only for math), and I think I could have studied even more. The biggest thing I learned from studying was that the GRE test writers are just kind of evil. This was implicit in the Manhattan Prep answer explanations I read, and explicit in the prep reading I did on Spark Notes.

 

2008: 164V (93%), 144Q (18%), 5.5W (97%)

2013: 168V (98%), 159Q (75%), 4.0W (54%)

 

As you can probably guess from my quant scores, the most important thing I found out from studying was that GRE math questions don't go much beyond high school-- but they dress up that math with trick questions, poor writing, and extraneous information. In 2008, I saw their insane diagrams and thought, "crap, I didn't study this" and guessed. In 2013, I knew that if something looked too hard for me to do in 2 minutes, it probably was, and found another way.

 

I'm sure there are similar ways a person could learn to thwart GRE evil in the other sections as well, if they wanted to (certainly in the writing, where I apparently impressed them on accident as a 21 year old). The verbal section is certainly fussy, and filled with words that are anachronistic and not terribly useful-- perfect for history majors (which I was). My math situation was just too dire to bother.

[Guest |||]

Yes some people will say don't bother because I am a math whiz/vocab whiz

 

but in reality, study the parts you can prior to test date, if anything itll just help to set the tone

[spellbanisher]

I flipped through a GRE prep book the week of the test, which I took in 2010. Scored 680v (95%), 580q (29%), and 5.5 on the analytical writing.

[Eclodemike]

Hey! I'm reading some vitriolic assessments of the importance of vocab, and I'd say yes it is of great importance to do well on the verbal section of the test, but scrutinizing lists of 'top GRE words' and so forth is most likely going to be a waste of time. I'd recommend reading journal articles/books with a dictionary, and synonym games, or word games in general. 

 

No practice tests, had an app for my phone called 'Synonyms Quiz' which I played constantly even before thinking about the GRE because it's fun as hell, but did not really study for math much outside a few Khan Academy videos, and ended up, as a humanities guy (NO EXCUSE FOR Q! I just knew that it wouldn't be of as much importance to adcomms), pretty content with my scores (except AW because I was loathe to address the first prompt and wrote a terrible essay). 

 

166V (96%), 155Q (69%), 4AW (54%)

 

-e

[roguesenna]

I signed up for the test about two weeks before taking it because I hadn't been sure I wanted to apply to Grad school prior to that. I had been waffling on the decision and my summer before that was insanely busy (working 70ish hours a week with 12hr days on weekends).

 

I knew I was a good test taker since I didn't study for the ACT and scored really well on it. I also know that I'm very talented in writing and reading and that i could probably get a decent score without even trying in that section. That said, I hadn't had a math class since highschool. So I borrowed a prep book from the library and downloaded an app to my iPad with practice questions. I focused primarily on the math for practice though I did a few verbal reviews just to familiarize myself with the format. I read some questions for the AW, but didn't write any practice essays, just kind of thought about what I would write.

 

I got 167V/158Q/5.5AW. I'm pretty pleased with that. I'll take it again for the next round and hope to improve my QR score just so I can have a higher cumulative. Maybe I'll do really well and somehow improve the VR & AW scores, but I doubt it and I won't be disappointed if I don't.

 

As far as vocab goes, I have a pretty advanced vocabulary for someone my age (and always have), largely because I read A LOT and I use context clues to infer meaning. I did absolutely NO vocab study for the GRE (nor did I do any for the SATs or ACTs in highschool). There were probably less than five words on the test that I had never heard before. Maybe another five that I had only heard/read a few times and was a little iffy on. Here's the thing though. If you have a *good* vocabulary (not a great one, just a good one), you can frequently use process of elimination on the fill-in-the-blank questions. And with the pairing questions (i.e. What two words could fit into this blank?), you can usually get at least one of the two words just on knowledge and then eliminate the other words by knowing they don't match the first one.

 

So yeah, vocab is good, but equally good is knowing how to acquire vocab. Which will be more useful to you in the long run than memorization anyway.

[victorydance]

Yes some people will say don't bother because I am a math whiz/vocab whiz

 

but in reality, study the parts you can prior to test date, if anything itll just help to set the tone

 

I agree with this approach. Unless you are limited for time, you should be studying all aspects of the test not just your weaknesses. You can only improve your score because of it.

 

I also agree that reading is the best way. But I think a multi-pronged approach is best. For example, if you are even just reviewing all the most common words on the GRE, then when you are reading your Economist articles or whatever, you know exactly what words to look out for. I find that using Anki and reading every day not only helps you learn context wise, but also what the precise definition is and for multiple definition words, what one is most important for the GRE.

[juilletmercredi]

I registered for my test 4 weeks before the test date; I was a senior undergrad taking 3 classes and writing an honors thesis.  I studied twice a week for about 2 hours a piece after taking a diagnostic test, and I scored 790 V / 740 Q / 6.0 AW.

 

As for vocabulary study - I agree that reading is the best way to build vocabulary, but that's the best way to build one long-term.  I don't think it's ideal for short-term GRE verbal study.  I found that Barron's had the best word list.  I didn't really need to do a lot of vocabulary work myself prior to the test (the part I sucked on the most was antonyms back when they still had them, freaking antonyms, because they have no context and they use the hardest possible words.  The one question I got wrong on verbal was a freaking antonym question with a word that I have literally never seen before, and I have a very large vocabulary.  All I remember is it started with a p.  I have never seen it since) but that's the word list I always recommend for vocab work because I did look it over and most of the words on the test were on the list, except for that stupid P word.

 

The math section was my weakness so I spent most of my time on that.  Honestly, the GRE math questions are such bs because they are worded in ways that ACTUAL math questions would never be worded, and seem deliberately designed to trick you.  Most of my practice was spent trying to figure out the tricks.  The actual math itself is pretty easy - it's basic arithmetic, algebra, and geometry/trigonometry from middle and early high school.

 

The writing section...it's basically a souped up version of the 5-paragraph essay.  If you plan and write an elaborated 5-paragraph essay, you should be fine.  It's really nothing like anything you'll actually write in graduate school and I'm not even sure why this section exists, because it's useless.  Factual accuracy is also not rewarded, so I made up some stuff when I couldn't remember the quotes and references I wanted to use and I still got a 6.0.

 

For study guides, I found that Kaplan's book had a lot of typos and a few inaccurate math answers.  Their questions were also much harder than the actual math questions (but the verbal were easier).  I liked Princeton Review - I think that had the most similarity to the actual difficulty level of questions on the test.  Barron's has the best word list but the questions aren't as good as Princeton Review's.  And of course use the PowerPREP program offered on ETS's website.

[orangeglacier]

I basically didn't prepare beyond an hour or so looking at practice questions on the website and got 162 M/170 V/5.5 W  (I think I lost most of my math points by forgetting the formula for the area of a circle ).  It's not too bad of a test.

[leighh]

I took it about three years ago, and didn't really study other than doing a little bit of math practice.  Got a 730V (168 estimated current score) / 670Q (152) / and a 4W.  Didn't bother to do my reasearch on it, or I would have known to stick more closely to the five-paragraph essay format.  I kind of wonder about taking it again to raise my writing, but, because of the format change, all my new scores would be the ones that counted, not just the best ones.  I just don't have enough confidence in matching or bettering my already mediocre quant score to risk it.

 

I didn't get into the one (extremely competitive) program I applied for and have been working instead, but I'm looking at applying to distance and/or part-time programs for next year.  So maybe I should retake it, after all.

[lemma]

I did a small amount of vocab prep, because as a STEM major, you don't really use that many words. I didn't really prepare for the math section or the essay. I ended up getting 170/170/5.5 - from my experience, math preparation doesn't help much if you're already in a quantitative major, but without doing some light vocab prep, I definitely wouldn't have gotten the verbal score that I did. 

[theoldbellsoftokyo]

I prepped for the quantitative portion (3 months of Khan academny and using Cliff Notes math review) because I have slept through mathmatics since middle school. I crammed in studying between my two part time jobs (60-80 hrs/week) and school and ended up with a stunningly "average-ish" score of 151/170. In all fairness, had I not studied I probably would have totally failed that portion of the test.

 

I totally winged the verbal and writing portion with no prep or studying whatsoever and got 166/170 and 5.0/6.0 respectively.

 

Overall I may re-take the GRE to get a higher score (I was aiming for a math score closer to 155-160) but for the fields I'm going into verbal and writing scores are more heavily weighed than math, and I think the ones I currently have are respectable.

[maelia8]

I'm in the humanities and math of the GRE variety (or any variety beyond percentages, simple long division and multiplication, and graph analysis) has not played a role in my life since I graduated from high school seven years ago. I didn't study for the verbal or writing section beyond reading the GRE prep book description of how the questions and essay were structured, and I got 167 verbal/5.0 writing and knew every word that came up on the test in the verbal section.

 

HOWEVER I studied math intensively for a month, reviewing all of the formulas and information that I hadn't used in seven years, and I only managed to get 148 quant. I was scrambling to finish the math questions in time - although I wasn't bad at math in high school, I am just not the kind of person who sees all of those tricks and shortcuts to answer questions on a rapid-fire timed test, and it usually takes me a couple of tries to get the right answer, which will kill you on the GRE in terms of time. I barely finished most of the math sections, and my experimental section was also math - by the third math section I was so sick of it that I honestly didn't care much anymore. I put in all of that study time because I knew that if I didn't review I'd do even worse on math, but I was fine with my math score since it mattered minimally when applying to a history Ph.D. program. 

[MilitaryTeacher2022]

While active duty in the military, I was selected for an education that required I attend graduate school. Upon this selection, I read through the program requirements, and started a short-list of schools I'd like to attend with their corresponding application requirements- this was the first time I'd heard of the GRE.

So I did what any good service member would do, plugged the GRE into Google, and signed up for the first available exam, which was one week away.

Long-story-somewhat-shorter, took the GRE w/ zero studying.

At the time of my GRE I had been out of my UNGRD for 4 years, and was not working in academia (obviously). I scored a 155V/152Q/3.5AWA

I didn't even know what those scores meant, but knew I could do better. While still in the parking lot at the testing facility, I signed up for another GRE... in 21 days.

Even though I was applying to a non-STEM program, I wanted to get my Q score up. Maybe because it was the lower of the two, or because it would be easier to improve, I'm not really sure... Nonetheless, I studied for 3 straight weeks nothing but the Math portions. Next test: 159V/154Q/3.5AWA

So, who the f knows, haha...

Good luck and best wishes, all!

[michelle_d]

Last time I took the GRE was July 2014.  I was currently enrolled part time in a post-bacc program at that time (still am) and did effectively no prep outside of keeping up with school.  Background:  I have a BA in History earned in 2007 and the post-bacc program I am in is for a BS in Economics.  I wrote 161V/157Q/5.0AW.  At the time that was 87%/68%/93% on percentiles for each component.

Verbal has always been stronger for me but 161 was lower than my last attempt on the old GRE (equivalent of a 164).  My Quant went up from the old GRE but not to where I wanted it.  My AW was the same.

I am taking it again in the fall (Sept/Oct.) and have decided to formally study and drill between now and then.  It's obvious to me that my vocabulary is degrading the longer I'm out of a writing based program, so I am using Magoosh's flashcards to drill in vocal.  I'm following their 6-month study program for those able to do advanced math to review all question types.  I'm reviewing problems I have trouble with like geometry, and some algebra I don't use often.  Haven't really used geometry since 9th grade.  I'm also using an iPhone program called GRE Writing to log some practice writing under the time limits again.  I'm aiming for a combined V/Q of 335 or better.  I want AW as a 5.0 or better more just as a personal preference.  My first time ever taking the GRE, back in 2008, I wrote a 5.5 AW.  I would love to meet or beat that this time.

Senda273 mentioned a great resource for Quant:  Khan Academy.  They have math concepts all the way up to differential calculus and cover the concepts tested on the Quant sections well.  Easily the best free math practice I've found.

Edited March 29, 2016 by michelle_d