GRE

Math is easy, verbal is not.

 

This.

Take a few practice tests because there are still a few math questions that might trip up someone who is good at math. For the writing portion of the test, I just looked up the good sample essays on the website and ended up getting a perfect score.

 

Kaplan material helps a lot.

I didnt find the material overly difficult, however my vocabulary isn't/wasn't the best so i took a little hit on verbal.

 

I took the GRE and the LSAT, and found the LSAT's verbal section to be harder than the GRE's.

Currently, I'm studying for the GMAT and it's much harder than the GRE imo.

Princeton Review and Barron's were the prep books I used so I recommend them.

 

Seconded. The math is high school level. If you did well on the SATs/SAT2 Math you'll do fine on that.

The verbal killed me. It's also high school level but in that stupid 'you need to know word analogies' sense. I took the test cold and got a 770M/510V. It was pretty close to my SAT math score but not even close to my SAT verbal (720).

My advice is bone up on your vocab. There's a GRE vocab flash card set that I bet woulda jumped my (verbal) score at least 100 points. Stupid words.

 

GRE is an interesting exam:

Questions at the beginning are worth more than questions at the end. Two people can get 24/25 and have different scores, depending on if they missed the first question or the last question.

You cannot skip any question. The computer chooses the next question based on whether you got the previous question right or wrong. So if you get stuck on a question at the beginning, there is a temptation to stay too long on it, because it's worth more. This can cause you to run out of time. At some point you have to guess and move on.

This happened to me on the math, I wasn't sure about an answer at the beginning and refused to guess because I wanted a high score. Ended up not finishing. Took it again and did well.

Just make sure you watch your clock and figure out how long you can spend on each question.

 

There are two different kinds of GRE tests, there is a general exam and a subject exam. The general exam is essentially the SAT. Maybe the math is slightly more difficult, but it's not difficult at all. The exam is computerized, and it gives you questions based on how you're doing, so be careful not to screw up the early questions, as that may mess up your score irretrievably.

The subject tests are considerably more difficult and involve actual knowledge that you learned in college. I took the math subject test and found it to be not trivial at all, like the math on the GRE General exam. There were questions on rather advanced calculus, linear algebra, and even some from abstract algebra and analysis. One should definitely put in some preparation for the subject tests.

 

repeat yet again

i just went in and took it cause i knew my verbal score didn't matter *too* much for what i was going in to at the time

 

GRE is easy. Math is super easy. Verbal is easy too if you have taken Latin.

GMAT is little more challenging and fun.

 

There were words in the verbal which I looked at and just cried. Then I went home, typed them into google, and couldn't find a definition. Problem?

 

If you're a science/engineering major, then don't worry about the math. You should expect to make in the 700s without any effort. That said, I would suggest you memorize the numbers/fractions for the common right triangles (30-60-90 & 45-45-90) and throw in the equilateral triangle while you're at it. Obviously, you could just work it out if needed, but if you go into the test with it memorized, you should be able to save yourself a cumulative 30 sec - 1 minute of work. And yes, that's an exact figure! I personally just went through one, maybe two, of the practice tests in a Kaplan book beforehand to get my pacing down.

As for verbal... well, seeing as I was going into a science/engineering graduate program, I simply needed to score "LITERATE." I started to study vocabulary but after 10 min, I decided it was a waste of my time to store such trivial knowledge for an aptitude test. Though, I did also go through verbal practice tests to get my pacing down--I'm a slow reader *sigh*.

 

What's funny about this is that there was a very informal study done in one of the top physics grad programs (U Chicago?) and the faculty found that the GRE Verbal score correlated with success in grad school more strongly than the quantitative or even the physics subject test.

 

I read in my school newspaper (UTSA) that they had change the standards for the GRE. It's supposed to be more difficult that it was before.