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Jibba
United States22883 Posts
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micronesia
United States24806 Posts
+ Show Spoiler + I might need to take them sooner or later but I've been lucky enough to dodge them so far. From what I've heard, many programs use the GRE as a weed out (not that they care how well you do at them, but rather they want people who panic and can't handle some tests out of their program before the real stress kicks in). I have no idea what program you are interested in that requires the GRE though. | ||
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Jibba
United States22883 Posts
Have you been doing Teach for America? I know that + Peace Corps are great for this stuff too. | ||
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micronesia
United States24806 Posts
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
gre verbal's huge pain in the ass. gre essays are ezpz if you know what their grading criteria is like. Sucks that poli sci programs acutally care about GRE scores like that  . engineering / sciences just use it as a cutoff and it really doesnt matter how well you do on them, like micro said. | ||
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Jibba
United States22883 Posts
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GHOSTCLAW
United States17042 Posts
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KOFgokuon
United States14912 Posts
and most science majors should too verbal is a pain just because of all of the vocab, it's like taking SAT verbal x2 essays are a crap shoot, i never prepped for them but i did well to be honest i finished the gre at least an hour before the actual official deadline. i finished my essays 25 minutes early, verbal 20 minutes early, and math like 30 minutes early just due to flying through it | ||
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Signet
United States1718 Posts
On November 13 2008 07:37 Jibba wrote: The math is just highschool level stuff, right? I honestly thought the GRE math was easier than the SAT math. Apparently most people go to college and forget how to do basic arithmetic. | ||
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benjammin
United States2728 Posts
also, remember the way the GRE adaptive testing works. the first few questions are ESSENTIAL to getting a high score on the test. take extra care in getting those correct, as you'll be fighting an uphill battle for the rest of the test if you don't. without getting too much on my soapbox, the GRE is really a miserable joke and its application to graduate schools is even more of a disgrace. if schools use it to break ties or determine financial aid/assistantship positions, that's the result of a lazy admissions program rather than a reliable system. your performance on the test has no bearing to your worth as a graduate student. think of it from the perspective of icing on the cake and not the deal breaker that the SATs have become. edit: oh yeah, as for the writing section just review what the GRE uses as a rubric and write strictly to the rubric. the first time i took them i did not and wrote as an english major should write and only got 5/6, the second time i just rigidly abided by the rubric and got a 6. there's really no preparation necessary. | ||
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micronesia
United States24806 Posts
On November 13 2008 08:16 benjammin wrote: the best advice i got was that there is a great deal more value in studying connotation rather than denotation. I find this very interesting. How exactly do you prepare for that? Everybody studying for the SAT uses obvious methods to study denotation... but besides becoming well read etc I really don't see how you could become better are context problems and ones where you need to rely on a fundamental understanding of the connotations of many words... | ||
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talismania
United States2364 Posts
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Signet
United States1718 Posts
On November 13 2008 08:18 micronesia wrote: I find this very interesting. How exactly do you prepare for that? Everybody studying for the SAT uses obvious methods to study denotation... but besides becoming well read etc I really don't see how you could become better are context problems and ones where you need to rely on a fundamental understanding of the connotations of many words... I don't think it's worth it to really study hard for the verbal section. If you're a math/science/econ/etc major, you are going to have to learn a TON of new vocabulary and then, like benjammin said, you are really going to have to know it inside and out. And what's the point? I got something like a 590 verbal GRE (it's been a while I forget) and that was enough to get accepted to grad school plus assistanceship. I'm guessing here, but I'd say that if you are going to grad school for Linguistics or something where having highly developed language skills is critical, hopefully you already have developed a decent ability to distinguish between different usage/connotations of similar-meaning words along with a deep vocabulary. | ||
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benjammin
United States2728 Posts
a lot of the antonyms/analogies will require you to disambiguate between words with similar meaning. say, for an example, a word like ABEYANCE. kaplan groups ABEYANCE into words meaning "withdrawl/retreat" while the connotation of the word has more to do with the suspension/cessation of something. so you might get an antonym question like... ABEYANCE A) institute B) continuance C) impecunious D) threnody where you can easily rule out C and D, but A and B mean roughly the same thing and the connotation of the word ABEYANCE would help you more than knowing what group of words it is similar to. that's difficult, because it tests knowledge of the vocabulary more than recognition. the best thing you can do is some cost/benefit analysis for studying the vocab. for me, as an english major, it was pretty significant to not have my verbal scores be a detriment, but if you are applying for something math/science, other aspects of your application are more important. | ||
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Jibba
United States22883 Posts
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KOFgokuon
United States14912 Posts
or if you've taken an SAT and done well classes will not be worth your time This isn't the MCAT which is an impossible test with lots of subjects to be covered Unless you're going to take a subject GRE (i didn't have to) then save your money and buy a couple of books, you'll do fine | ||
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fight_or_flight
United States3988 Posts
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