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I don't know how many of you know what the GRE is but, the test will be "revamped" in August. This test is a prerequisite to getting into many Science related graduate schools if not a must have. Top score on this test is 1600-800 coming from math 800 coming from English. The writing portion is laughable only because it is not included in your total score.
Recently I found out from an Asian source that the test comes in "pools" meaning every month the pool of questions for the test gets swapped out. So if you took the test you could potentially remember what questions you got and post them somewhere. (all questions are multiple choice) These people did just that and from what I know undeserving people were scoring 1500+ on these tests by just remembering the pooled questions. A score of 1500 will undoubtedly help you get into a graduate school of choice and even scholarships.
Just because I found out from an Asian doesn't mean all Asians are cheating or if others are not doing the same. The test will change in the coming months, but whose to say it will do anything about the cheating.
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South Africa4316 Posts
As far as I know, this is not how the GRE works. There is a large pool of questions (way more than appear in any single test) and the test gives you questions based on how well or poorly you answer. The better your answers, the more difficult your questions. Where I wrote the GRE, you were also forced to leave all your belongings in a locker outside the test facility, so unless you have an unbelievable memory, you'll have difficulty smuggling more than one or two questions out.
I might be wrong though, but I doubt this kind of cheating it possible.
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United States996 Posts
yeah whatever question you are asked next is based on how you've done on each question before it. even still seeing a chunk of questions online is certainly an unfair advantage
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United States22883 Posts
Yeah, I don't think that's true either. All I know is that it's a different test pool each day, and it's scored on a curve. So if you can pick a day when the other test takers are hung over, you're at an advantage but it's probably hard to figure out that day.
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I don't think there are pools in terms of questions, but I do think there are pools in terms of vocabulary. I heard this from some Asians using specific Asian books, which apparently are very popular and have a lot of research going into them as far as the test goes, since there are many students who transfer over to an American school and want to go to grad school, etc.
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South Africa4316 Posts
On July 23 2011 07:11 Z3kk wrote:
I don't think there are pools in terms of questions, but I do think there are pools in terms of vocabulary. I heard this from some Asians using specific Asian books, which apparently are very popular and have a lot of research going into them as far as the test goes, since there are many students who transfer over to an American school and want to go to grad school, etc.
Well yeah, you get all the "How to do well in the GRE" books. There is a fairly well known vocabularly that they test you on, but good luck trying to study all "800 essential GRE words". Even then, they are just the most common words. When I was studying for the GRE, I saw a book that collected all the GRE words that had been used more than X times, and it had more than 5000 words. You can study for the GRE, but there's no quick and easy cheat sheet that I'm aware of.
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On July 23 2011 06:54 McFly wrote:
A score of 1500 will undoubtedly help you get into a graduate school of choice and even scholarships.
Actually, the general GRE is almost irrelevant at the good graduate schools I'm familiar with (at least in mathematics and similar disciplines).
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@Daigomi: Right, but they have these massive books with 5000 words, and I have heard from someone using one that there are cycles of these words, so one can narrow down the study words to around 500-1,000 or something like that. I don't know the methodology or anything like that, but I've just heard this.
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On July 23 2011 07:15 Daigomi wrote:There is a fairly well known vocabularly that they test you on, but good luck trying to study all " 800 essential GRE words".
If you grow up in an educational system that emphasizes memorization, this apparently isn't that unusual. My wife studied a list of around 3500 words for the GRE, and ended up with a 580, pretty good when English is your second language. She claims that the people who really excel in the Chinese education system can do much better.
EDIT: I guess I like the word "actually" today.
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South Africa4316 Posts
On July 23 2011 07:25 Z3kk wrote:
@Daigomi: Right, but they have these massive books with 5000 words, and I have heard from someone using one that there are cycles of these words, so one can narrow down the study words to around 500-1,000 or something like that. I don't know the methodology or anything like that, but I've just heard this.
Haha, have you ever tried to learn 1000 new words? A literate person has a vocabulary of roughly 2000 words, so imagine what it feels like to try to learn 50% more words than you spent your entire life learning. I remember when I studied for the vocab, I took something like the 500 most common words, went through them and crossed out everything I already knew which left me with about 200 words. Those words took me forever and a day to learn. Fortunately I found the vocab fairly interesting so it wasn't too bad. In the end, you use those words on maybe five of the questions out of the 30 vocab questions you get.
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I know for a fact that the math subject GRE reuses questions because I took it twice. Also, the chinese are notorious for cheating on that test.
For top programs, your GRE score means less than you think. In some cases, it's an absolute non-factor.
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of course there is a pool of questions, at least in North America there is. That's how Asians can score over 700 on verbal, and would have got like below 500 otherwise.
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people had to cheat on the GRE? there's the real sadness.
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I just took GRE yesterday (I got a 720v/710q, yay me.) I don't see cheating happening but it could be somewhat possible especially on the math section. I was doing paper tests to practice and they had relatively few difficult questions which I ran into a lot. If I had seen a type of question like that at least once before it would have been much easier. Shit like what is the area of a regular hexagon with edge length 6 (54sqrt3, fyi.) With trig I could have figured it out, but that isn't supposed to be on the test so there must be another way way.
As to memorizing 500 words, I did it pretty easily over the course of 3 weeks using flash cards. I would say about 5-7 actually showed up but it did help significantly. An added benefit is that I drop vocab attacks as part of regular conversation.
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On July 23 2011 07:30 Daigomi wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2011 07:25 Z3kk wrote:
@Daigomi: Right, but they have these massive books with 5000 words, and I have heard from someone using one that there are cycles of these words, so one can narrow down the study words to around 500-1,000 or something like that. I don't know the methodology or anything like that, but I've just heard this. Haha, have you ever tried to learn 1000 new words? A literate person has a vocabulary of roughly 2000 words, so imagine what it feels like to try to learn 50% more words than you spent your entire life learning. I remember when I studied for the vocab, I took something like the 500 most common words, went through them and crossed out everything I already knew which left me with about 200 words. Those words took me forever and a day to learn. Fortunately I found the vocab fairly interesting so it wasn't too bad. In the end, you use those words on maybe five of the questions out of the 30 vocab questions you get.
Okay, I take your word for it because you've actually taken the GRE, heh. To be fair, though, not all 1000 words are necessarily new, and a lot of people devote a crazy amount of time to pure studying.
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South Africa4316 Posts
On July 23 2011 07:54 Z3kk wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2011 07:30 Daigomi wrote:On July 23 2011 07:25 Z3kk wrote:
@Daigomi: Right, but they have these massive books with 5000 words, and I have heard from someone using one that there are cycles of these words, so one can narrow down the study words to around 500-1,000 or something like that. I don't know the methodology or anything like that, but I've just heard this. Haha, have you ever tried to learn 1000 new words? A literate person has a vocabulary of roughly 2000 words, so imagine what it feels like to try to learn 50% more words than you spent your entire life learning. I remember when I studied for the vocab, I took something like the 500 most common words, went through them and crossed out everything I already knew which left me with about 200 words. Those words took me forever and a day to learn. Fortunately I found the vocab fairly interesting so it wasn't too bad. In the end, you use those words on maybe five of the questions out of the 30 vocab questions you get. Okay, I take your word for it because you've actually taken the GRE, heh. To be fair, though, not all 1000 words are necessarily new, and a lot of people devote a crazy amount of time to pure studying.
Yeah, like I said you can study for it, but it's hardly cheating if you have to spend three weeks studying just to get a few words you know :p
On July 23 2011 07:41 indigoawareness wrote:
I just took GRE yesterday (I got a 720v/710q, yay me.) I don't see cheating happening but it could be somewhat possible especially on the math section. I was doing paper tests to practice and they had relatively few difficult questions which I ran into a lot. If I had seen a type of question like that at least once before it would have been much easier. Shit like what is the area of a regular hexagon with edge length 6 (54sqrt3, fyi.) With trig I could have figured it out, but that isn't supposed to be on the test so there must be another way way.
As to memorizing 500 words, I did it pretty easily over the course of 3 weeks using flash cards. I would say about 5-7 actually showed up but it did help significantly. An added benefit is that I drop vocab attacks as part of regular conversation.
Congrats on the 720/710! 720 verbal is amazing 
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United States3594 Posts
i'm so fail 690/250 hahahahahahahha
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No it is true to a certain extent. Even though the map pool is fairly large, there are certain questions which are repeated within a month. If someone can actually remember them and put them down, you can get the general pattern of the test, but not the exact questions, although that has happened aswell.
http://drrajus.in/forum/viewforum.php?f=15
Check it out...Was quite angry when I found out about this,But then hey, they test itself is quite easy if you have a math background, and most engineers/science grads get 750+ in that test anyway (I got 800 :D).
And he word list is irritating to learn, I had an app on my phone that helped me learn it on the way to work, I didnt really bother with verb because as long as you get a decent score in that it's fine, quants are what schools look at for computers etc, in the end I got a few words that I've never heard off....(wtf is a hangdog?), and 4 friggin long essays, I had no time, though I screwed up, but ended up getting 680.
It's kinda easy to game the test, if you perform really really well in the first 15-20 questions, your going to have a lot of leeway in the last 10 or so ones,I know I made a mistake in my quants, cause I misclicked the answer and pressed okay(and you cant go back) and in my verbal section I had no time for the last 8 questions,so I half guessed/randomly picked and still got about 660.
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Foolishness
United States3044 Posts
I'm pretty sure that you could get away with stealing some of the scrap paper they give you for the test, especially since you're allowed to ask for more. Just write down the questions (as fast as you can) as you go; stuff the paper in your clothes. As long as you're sitting where camera's won't see you it should be fine (the place where I took it had a few camera's but not enough).
Otherwise you would need a lot of people to memorize possible questions.
Another thought: I'm not sure if the GRE randomizes the order for the answers (I know the SAT/ACT do not). If they don't you just need to memorize the answer choices (which is ridiculously easy if you practice a little).
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Foolishness
United States3044 Posts
On July 23 2011 08:03 dartoo wrote:No it is true to a certain extent. Even though the map pool is fairly large, there are certain questions which are repeated within a month. If someone can actually remember them and put them down, you can get the general pattern of the test, but not the exact questions, although that has happened aswell. http://drrajus.in/forum/viewforum.php?f=15Check it out...Was quite angry when I found out about this,But then hey, they test itself is quite easy if you have a math background, and most engineers/science grads get 750+ in that test anyway (I got 800 :D). And he word list is irritating to learn, I had an app on my phone that helped me learn it on the way to work, I didnt really bother with verb because as long as you get a decent score in that it's fine, quants are what schools look at for computers etc, in the end I got a few words that I've never heard off....(wtf is a hangdog?), and 4 friggin long essays, I had no time, though I screwed up, but ended up getting 680. It's kinda easy to game the test, if you perform really really well in the first 15-20 questions, your going to have a lot of leeway in the last 10 or so ones,I know I made a mistake in my quants, cause I misclicked the answer and pressed okay(and you cant go back) and in my verbal section I had no time for the last 8 questions,so I half guessed/randomly picked and still got about 660.
The test is set up such that if you get the first 5 correct and the rest wrong you will get a higher score than if you got the first 5 wrong and all the rest correct.
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On July 23 2011 07:30 Daigomi wrote:
A literate person has a vocabulary of roughly 2000 words, so imagine what it feels like to try to learn 50% more words than you spent your entire life learning.
That's way lower than the actual number. The average person with a high school education knows about 10,000 words, I would guess. Googling around the web, the estimate for a college educated person is 20-25k. Actually, it seems hard to find good references for this, but one good article I did find is http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/howmany.htm, which suggests the actual number of words for a college student could be as high as 60k.
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On July 23 2011 07:57 Daigomi wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2011 07:54 Z3kk wrote:On July 23 2011 07:30 Daigomi wrote:On July 23 2011 07:25 Z3kk wrote:
@Daigomi: Right, but they have these massive books with 5000 words, and I have heard from someone using one that there are cycles of these words, so one can narrow down the study words to around 500-1,000 or something like that. I don't know the methodology or anything like that, but I've just heard this. Haha, have you ever tried to learn 1000 new words? A literate person has a vocabulary of roughly 2000 words, so imagine what it feels like to try to learn 50% more words than you spent your entire life learning. I remember when I studied for the vocab, I took something like the 500 most common words, went through them and crossed out everything I already knew which left me with about 200 words. Those words took me forever and a day to learn. Fortunately I found the vocab fairly interesting so it wasn't too bad. In the end, you use those words on maybe five of the questions out of the 30 vocab questions you get. Okay, I take your word for it because you've actually taken the GRE, heh. To be fair, though, not all 1000 words are necessarily new, and a lot of people devote a crazy amount of time to pure studying. Yeah, like I said you can study for it, but it's hardly cheating if you have to spend three weeks studying just to get a few words you know :p
Oh, I didn't mean to imply that they're cheating :O
...though I guess I was by corollary, even though I didn't mean it ><
The person who told me this did end up getting a 1600, and was much, much more comfortable speaking Chinese than English, though, so go figure.
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South Africa4316 Posts
On July 23 2011 08:21 munchmunch wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2011 07:30 Daigomi wrote:
A literate person has a vocabulary of roughly 2000 words, so imagine what it feels like to try to learn 50% more words than you spent your entire life learning. That's way lower than the actual number. The average person with a high school education knows about 10,000 words, I would guess. Googling around the web, the estimate for a college educated person is 20-25k. Actually, it seems hard to find good references for this, but one good article I did find is http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/howmany.htm, which suggests the actual number of words for a college student could be as high as 60k.
You're right, I quickly perused wikipedia but it seems I took that stat out of context. This says that it's 12,000 for high schoolers and 17,000 for university students, although you'd understand 96% of spoken language if you knew the 2000 most common words
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I hate the GRE. Such a stupid test that basically is there just for money :[ Does not show a students potential at all for graduate school.
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It's only for US schools thankfully, so I'm glad I'm applying to Canadian and UK schools as well. It's really hard to stay above the curve in my math program because of blatant cheating on pretty much every final, not surprised to see things are similar with the GRE.
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On July 23 2011 08:28 Slaughter wrote:
I hate the GRE. Such a stupid test that basically is there just for money :[ Does not show a students potential at all for graduate school.
Yeah, it's just life, I guess 
One needs a way to efficiently assess the intelligence of a very large pool of applicants, and standardized testing is one (not necessarily 100% correct) approach.
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Oh. I know about this. I saw some of these questions before I took the GRE.
Most of these comes from South Korea, as far as I know. Also, the effect of these leaked questions, and the effect of GRE on your school scholarships, are largely exaggerated. Furthermore many of the questions are extremely incomplete/wrong.
If I recall correctly, out of the 23 verbal questions I had, there were only two questions that were on the set of leaked questions.... and they weren't from the reading comprehension part, just word association (which is easy). And no, they don't give the same questions to everyone in one month. Instead, they have a huge pool of questions which they draw upon somewhat randomly.
Also, I honestly doubt your GRE, especially general GRE, has any real value in your graduate school application. For one instance, a very strong student from my university answered "B" on all questions and still got in PhD at Princeton University. Perhaps more importantly, the general GRE does not accurately measure the strength of the student or the likelihood of his/her success in graduate school. All the admission officers I talked to say this: the general GRE is just a formality. So long as applicant can do reasonably well (I believe 1200-1300+ is reasonably well), it won't hinder your application at all.
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@Sufficiency: that is actually very good to know, and I have sort of suspected that, but hearing it from someone whom I trust (TL for the win) in no uncertain terms is very reassuring, haha.
...how does it compare to the SAT, though? Your tag says Canada, so does that mean you didn't take the SAT?
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On July 23 2011 09:13 Z3kk wrote:
@Sufficiency: that is actually very good to know, and I have sort of suspected that, but hearing it from someone whom I trust (TL for the win) in no uncertain terms is very reassuring, haha.
...how does it compare to the SAT, though? Your tag says Canada, so does that mean you didn't take the SAT?
I never took SAT, sorry. But I know for a fact that the SAT tests real knowledge of the student, unlike the general GRE, which tests soft skills.
The OP is somewhat under the impression that the general GRE changed because of "rampant" cheating. The real reason is actually that the old general GRE is a retarded test. I understand the need for admission to be able to compare students from different universities, but in that case, the subject test is more meaningful.
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On July 23 2011 09:09 Sufficiency wrote:
Oh. I know about this. I saw some of these questions before I took the GRE.
Most of these comes from South Korea, as far as I know. Also, the effect of these leaked questions, and the effect of GRE on your school scholarships, are largely exaggerated. Furthermore many of the questions are extremely incomplete/wrong.
If I recall correctly, out of the 23 verbal questions I had, there were only two questions that were on the set of leaked questions.... and they weren't from the reading comprehension part, just word association (which is easy). And no, they don't give the same questions to everyone in one month. Instead, they have a huge pool of questions which they draw upon somewhat randomly.
Also, I honestly doubt your GRE, especially general GRE, has any real value in your graduate school application. For one instance, a very strong student from my university answered "B" on all questions and still got in PhD at Princeton University. Perhaps more importantly, the general GRE does not accurately measure the strength of the student or the likelihood of his/her success in graduate school. All the admission officers I talked to say this: the general GRE is just a formality. So long as applicant can do reasonably well (I believe 1200-1300+ is reasonably well), it won't hinder your application at all.
A question from a curious foreigner, what IS it that the admission officers look at then when picking students?
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On July 23 2011 09:09 Sufficiency wrote:
Oh. I know about this. I saw some of these questions before I took the GRE.
Most of these comes from South Korea, as far as I know. Also, the effect of these leaked questions, and the effect of GRE on your school scholarships, are largely exaggerated. Furthermore many of the questions are extremely incomplete/wrong.
If I recall correctly, out of the 23 verbal questions I had, there were only two questions that were on the set of leaked questions.... and they weren't from the reading comprehension part, just word association (which is easy). And no, they don't give the same questions to everyone in one month. Instead, they have a huge pool of questions which they draw upon somewhat randomly.
Also, I honestly doubt your GRE, especially general GRE, has any real value in your graduate school application. For one instance, a very strong student from my university answered "B" on all questions and still got in PhD at Princeton University. Perhaps more importantly, the general GRE does not accurately measure the strength of the student or the likelihood of his/her success in graduate school. All the admission officers I talked to say this: the general GRE is just a formality. So long as applicant can do reasonably well (I believe 1200-1300+ is reasonably well), it won't hinder your application at all.
Yea I remember when I was applying to graduate schools a couple didn't even want your GRE score. I think when programs get a lot of applicants though I have heard that it can be the initial weeding out process (like in my field I have heard a couple of the really competitive ones don't even look at your app if you have below a 1300). Every school/department is different though.
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On July 23 2011 09:40 gullberg wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2011 09:09 Sufficiency wrote:
Oh. I know about this. I saw some of these questions before I took the GRE.
Most of these comes from South Korea, as far as I know. Also, the effect of these leaked questions, and the effect of GRE on your school scholarships, are largely exaggerated. Furthermore many of the questions are extremely incomplete/wrong.
If I recall correctly, out of the 23 verbal questions I had, there were only two questions that were on the set of leaked questions.... and they weren't from the reading comprehension part, just word association (which is easy). And no, they don't give the same questions to everyone in one month. Instead, they have a huge pool of questions which they draw upon somewhat randomly.
Also, I honestly doubt your GRE, especially general GRE, has any real value in your graduate school application. For one instance, a very strong student from my university answered "B" on all questions and still got in PhD at Princeton University. Perhaps more importantly, the general GRE does not accurately measure the strength of the student or the likelihood of his/her success in graduate school. All the admission officers I talked to say this: the general GRE is just a formality. So long as applicant can do reasonably well (I believe 1200-1300+ is reasonably well), it won't hinder your application at all. A question from a curious foreigner, what IS it that the admission officers look at then when picking students?
I am in biostatistics. I remember one admission officer said that he was looking for good background in mathematics, statistics, and strong interest in science.
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On July 23 2011 09:49 Sufficiency wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2011 09:40 gullberg wrote:On July 23 2011 09:09 Sufficiency wrote:
Oh. I know about this. I saw some of these questions before I took the GRE.
Most of these comes from South Korea, as far as I know. Also, the effect of these leaked questions, and the effect of GRE on your school scholarships, are largely exaggerated. Furthermore many of the questions are extremely incomplete/wrong.
If I recall correctly, out of the 23 verbal questions I had, there were only two questions that were on the set of leaked questions.... and they weren't from the reading comprehension part, just word association (which is easy). And no, they don't give the same questions to everyone in one month. Instead, they have a huge pool of questions which they draw upon somewhat randomly.
Also, I honestly doubt your GRE, especially general GRE, has any real value in your graduate school application. For one instance, a very strong student from my university answered "B" on all questions and still got in PhD at Princeton University. Perhaps more importantly, the general GRE does not accurately measure the strength of the student or the likelihood of his/her success in graduate school. All the admission officers I talked to say this: the general GRE is just a formality. So long as applicant can do reasonably well (I believe 1200-1300+ is reasonably well), it won't hinder your application at all. A question from a curious foreigner, what IS it that the admission officers look at then when picking students? I am in biostatistics. I remember one admission officer said that he was looking for good background in mathematics, statistics, and strong interest in science.
Well that sure sounds general lol, it's very easy to get accepted for an M.Sc in Sweden (atleast compared to the US), however I'm considering atleast trying to apply to grad schools in UK/US and see how it goes.
Electrical Engineering here 
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On July 23 2011 10:00 gullberg wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2011 09:49 Sufficiency wrote:On July 23 2011 09:40 gullberg wrote:On July 23 2011 09:09 Sufficiency wrote:
Oh. I know about this. I saw some of these questions before I took the GRE.
Most of these comes from South Korea, as far as I know. Also, the effect of these leaked questions, and the effect of GRE on your school scholarships, are largely exaggerated. Furthermore many of the questions are extremely incomplete/wrong.
If I recall correctly, out of the 23 verbal questions I had, there were only two questions that were on the set of leaked questions.... and they weren't from the reading comprehension part, just word association (which is easy). And no, they don't give the same questions to everyone in one month. Instead, they have a huge pool of questions which they draw upon somewhat randomly.
Also, I honestly doubt your GRE, especially general GRE, has any real value in your graduate school application. For one instance, a very strong student from my university answered "B" on all questions and still got in PhD at Princeton University. Perhaps more importantly, the general GRE does not accurately measure the strength of the student or the likelihood of his/her success in graduate school. All the admission officers I talked to say this: the general GRE is just a formality. So long as applicant can do reasonably well (I believe 1200-1300+ is reasonably well), it won't hinder your application at all. A question from a curious foreigner, what IS it that the admission officers look at then when picking students? I am in biostatistics. I remember one admission officer said that he was looking for good background in mathematics, statistics, and strong interest in science. Well that sure sounds general lol, it's very easy to get accepted for an M.Sc in Sweden (atleast compared to the US), however I'm considering atleast trying to apply to grad schools in UK/US and see how it goes. Electrical Engineering here
It does sound general, but that's seriously the best advice that can be given. Take a lot of graduate courses, try to participate in research, etc.
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Everything I have heard suggests that most schools are not particularly interested in a stellar GRE. They typically have a "cutoff" below which your application would be damaged, but there is little premium for high scores. So the GRE is unlike the SAT or the LSAT in this regard.
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On July 23 2011 09:40 gullberg wrote:
A question from a curious foreigner, what IS it that the admission officers look at then when picking students?
For North American math/phys/CS grad schools, it's (1) reference letters, (2) research experience, and (3) grades, roughly but not necessarily in that order. Admission decisions are usually made by professors, rather than admission officers.
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On July 23 2011 09:17 Sufficiency wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2011 09:13 Z3kk wrote:
@Sufficiency: that is actually very good to know, and I have sort of suspected that, but hearing it from someone whom I trust (TL for the win) in no uncertain terms is very reassuring, haha.
...how does it compare to the SAT, though? Your tag says Canada, so does that mean you didn't take the SAT? I never took SAT, sorry. But I know for a fact that the SAT tests real knowledge of the student, unlike the general GRE, which tests soft skills. The OP is somewhat under the impression that the general GRE changed because of "rampant" cheating. The real reason is actually that the old general GRE is a retarded test. I understand the need for admission to be able to compare students from different universities, but in that case, the subject test is more meaningful.
I'm going to have to disagree with you about the SAT. If they had given the general GRE on paper, I honestly wouldn't have been able to tell the difference between it and the SAT.
Re: the OP's worries, because the GRE is a computerized adaptive test that changes the next question based on your answer to the current one, even if there is a general pool of questions you're very unlikely to come across the same questions if you take the test twice in the same period. That's also why I've always believed that studying vocab for Verbal is something you should skip entirely unless you're willing to dedicate a tremendous amount of time to it.
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To clarify the non believers: There are hundreds if not thousands of these people taking the GRE in the same month which the pools were being used. So it wasn't just one person remembering the answers. As the test gets harder-the more questions you get correctly the less the pool becomes-its just the nature of the test-less problems to remember.
I really cannot prove to you that this did happen. But, from my own experience a less than bright Chinese student whose English is horrendous was able to score a 1520 by cheating off of the pool.
Further Clarification-I have already obtained my Masters and will not be taking the GRE in my lifetime, I went to a business graduate school and only had to take the GMAT which is soooo easy. This was blog was to try to point out the weaknesses of this test.
I can say for the people who say the GRE is not important for some universities-This may be true but specifically in CHINA this test to get into a GRADUATE school is very important to them and their family.
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i'm not sure how these people pulled off this cheating anyway. the testing center i took the GRE at was extremely orewellian. you had to empty all your pockets into a locker outside of the testing room except for your photo id, you had to do a fingerprint scan before being allowed into the testing facility, the facility had cameras monitoring every testing station and the room itself, your photo id had to be face up on the table for the duration of the test, and you were not allowed to move your hands off of the desk or your test scores would be invalidated. if people managed to make it out with scrap paper with questions written on them, i'd be surprised, but maybe not every testing center was this intense.
still, the test is easy. however, to say it makes no difference is really an underestimate. grad schools are extremely competitive, so it's not like you can just guess at random and expect you'll get into the best school
edit: you also had to wear giant noise blocking headphones that made me feel like a progamer
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On July 23 2011 10:51 munchmunch wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2011 09:40 gullberg wrote:
A question from a curious foreigner, what IS it that the admission officers look at then when picking students? For North American math/phys/CS grad schools, it's (1) reference letters, (2) research experience, and (3) grades, roughly but not necessarily in that order. Admission decisions are usually made by professors, rather than admission officers.
This. Generally speaking research experience and reference letters go hand in hand, because if you do great research in undergrad you should be getting great references as well. Grades come in 3rd because they are only a general indicator of ability, not a direct one like research. They still count but not as much as you might think.
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United States10328 Posts
On July 23 2011 08:21 munchmunch wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2011 07:30 Daigomi wrote:
A literate person has a vocabulary of roughly 2000 words, so imagine what it feels like to try to learn 50% more words than you spent your entire life learning. That's way lower than the actual number. The average person with a high school education knows about 10,000 words, I would guess. Googling around the web, the estimate for a college educated person is 20-25k. Actually, it seems hard to find good references for this, but one good article I did find is http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/howmany.htm, which suggests the actual number of words for a college student could be as high as 60k.
I'm not sure how accurate this website is, but http://testyourvocab.com/ is pretty interesting. (Sorry for the tangent. Apparently the average for people taking this test is 29,000 words; of course since it's self-reported people are bound to give themselves the benefit of the doubt...)
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A lot of my chinese friends cheat or cheated in some way on the MCAT and LSAT too. A LOT of people cheat to get ahead in life, that's just kinda how that works :/
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On July 24 2011 07:55 Count9 wrote:
A lot of my chinese friends cheat or cheated in some way on the MCAT and LSAT too. A LOT of people cheat to get ahead in life, that's just kinda how that works :/
How can they cheat on the LSAT? The U.S. test is completely different from the International version isn't it?
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EPT
