Realistic score increase

[Chiqui74]

Assuming you took a baseline test without preparation and spent a couple of months studying, what would be a reasonable and realistic point increase in each the quant and the verbal?  I'm mostly concerned with the verbal as I am in the humanities but my quant is dismal and a few, or several, points would be most helpul.

 

TiA!

[victorydance]

Depends how efficiently and properly you studied during those two months honestly.

 

For reference, I have studied quite diligently the last 6 months and have improved my quant and verbal scores by over 10 points each. This is after a ridiculous amount of time sunk into it though.

Edited September 4, 2014 by victorydance

[bsharpe269]

I studied for about 3-5 hours a week for 3 or 4 months and brought by score from 157V, 161Q to 162V, 168Q. Studying makes a big difference, especially learning vocab and doing lots of practice questions.

[Crucial BBQ]

Honestly, hard to tell.  What was the original baseline score?  

[themmases]

It really depends. My personal experience was that being prepared for the GRE as a test-- understanding what kind of questions would be asked, what counts as a good AW answer, having some idea how the creators think-- was more important and easier to change quickly than content area knowledge. But that probably depends on your background.

 

I did take the GRE without studying in 2008, and with studying in 2013. I'd always been a good test taker and I must have had three upper-level history classes I was researching and writing for, so I just didn't study the first time. The older scores aren't valid now, but they were-- just barely-- when I applied to schools last year if I had wanted to use them. After 4 years of working full-time, one month of casual studying (only quant) and 2 weeks of serious studying (only quant), here is how my score percentiles changed:

 

V: 94th-98th (+4%)

Q: 18th-74th (+56%)

AW: 98th-56th (-42%)

 

I was never bad at math, and I didn't get hit on the head and forget how to write (or, uh, I don't know-- you guys tell me!). GRE quant only goes up to high school math, but it asks you weird stuff, confusing stuff, stuff that looks harder than it is, and things no one would ever want to know outside of a standardized test. If you don't know that and you're a humanities person, you're quite liable to do what I did and put down your best estimate-- which is often a trick answer-- because you're desperate to just move on. If you passed high school math, aren't constantly making silly arithmetic mistakes, and can work through problems that probably only look complicated without panicking, you can do fine on GRE math. Even if you are in the humanities there is no need to embarrass yourself or render your scores unusable if you decide to change fields (as I did).

 

I got nearly the same AW question in 2008 and 2013. It touched on an area where my political beliefs, my research interests, and a memorable quote from one of my favorite pamphlets intersect and so naturally my answer was nearly the same too. The only difference was that in 2013 I noticed myself writing nearly the same thing, freaked out, and cut off (what I thought of as) a digression that would have made the answers basically identical-- this is not a quote I see other people break out regularly. This took my materially similar answer from a nice, conventional 5 paragraph essay to maybe 4 paragraphs, and my score from 5.5 to 4.0. Don't be me, write a 5-paragraph essay even if you don't want to.

 

As for verbal I've never intentionally studied for it other than a self-check at the beginning of my 2013 studying. I'm just lucky I guess.

[Chiqui74]

Thanks, everyone!  I won't lie, the math freaks me out.  A lot of the thigns on the practice test were concepts I learned in high school and even in lower division college math course but have since forgotten; it's been many years since I graduated high school and a few since I took my last math course in college.  I need to brush up on those concepts.  I'm actually suprised I did so poorly on the verbal part, but I'm sure everyone who scores lower than they'd like says that. 

[victorydance]

^ I would advise to start by nailing down your algebra first. Many questions on the GRE can be solved in part, or fully, by basic algebraic skills (geometry for example is virtually all algebra). Study especially things like operations with roots, exponents, and fractions because these are things that people often forget the little rules.

 

Then move on to number properties, which make up a ridiculous amount of the GRE math section. Things like prime factorization, prime numbers, consecutive integer sets, and divisibility. Counting questions are also a prevalent theme in the quant section, learn and master the fundamental counting principle, as well as combinations and factorials.

 

Then brush up on the more rare things like statistics, probability, weighted averages, and word problems. 

 

Two months isn't a lot of time, so study strategically. There are things that are rare or may never show up on the GRE that you take. Spend more time nailing down the fundamentals and learning how to approach the different kinds of questions.

Edited September 4, 2014 by victorydance