338: Q170; V168. I just BEAT the GRE!

[kins]

On 11/03/2015 at 1:23 PM, MathCat said:

Congrats on the scores, and overall this is probably good advice for people struggling with the GRE. But what you said here bothers me. I think the GRE is generally a pretty good measure of how well prepared you are just by your education and lifestyle, really. Somebody who reads for pleasure and has good critical thinking and numerical reasoning skills should score pretty well (probably not as well as you) without too much prep. Thus, it's not worth the time or money for this person to prep as you did. In that situation some of this time (and money) could be better spent on other aspects of applications - e.g. SOP, writing sample, or researching schools. I don't say this to brag, but rather to illustrate - I prepped for verbal on and off for about a month (learning vocab, as part of daily routine), quant for a few days, and practiced a few essay topics over two days. I paid less than $20 on prep materials - I just bought the official guide for practice problems on Amazon. I scored 170Q, 166V, 5.0 AW. I don't think I needed to spend any more time at this, because as a math major the quant is a breeze, and math hones your critical thinking too, which helps with verbal. People in other majors may need to spend more time on quant, though.

 

I think in general the GRE is given too much emphasis on webpages like this. It can certainly hurt you if you bomb it, but I'm not convinced it gets you into a top program unless the rest of your application is at that level. In that case, you're probably somebody who can score well enough on the GRE without too much stress, at least on the sections most relevant to your major, which is what the admissions team will care most about, I think. I could be wrong here, and I'm not counting people who get test anxiety. It is worth some time for anyone to learn the tricks of the test, though.\

 

edit: I also spent a couple of days doing the official practice tests (2 online, 2 in the book). That's definitely time well spent.

Old thread but I totally agree with this. I cringe when I see people who've spent thousands of dollars and studied hours a day and taken the test multiple times to get their GRE score. I mean I understand why people do it... but it just seems sad... Eh

[makingtheleap.back]

Given the highlight over the text, the number of posts by the OP, and bullets promoting key content, I'm gonna go ahead and call this marketing by a test-prep company until proven otherwise. 

Edited July 31, 2017 by makingtheleap.back

[JohnKim]

Wow! This is really cool. So, your investment really paid off.

I am currently taking Magoosh, Preped and Kaplan. Will think about using the same program you used. 

Congratulations on your GRE Result.