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Well, I'm taking the GRE Tuesday afternoon (3pm or so). I posted this blog about it in November... I started studying about 4.5 weeks ago (before Thanksgiving), taking a brief 9 day interlude when my gf came to LA to visit me.
Over the past week I've put in 3 hours per day, last night I did about 5 hours, and today I studied almost 11 hours (rahh). The other three weeks I was putting in about 8-10 hours per week.
Here's the sort of problem I'm encountering... I've memorized (flash cards n shit) almost 300 vocab words, but on the verbal section there are still always a small handful of words I don't know that will cause me to get questions wrong. I feel like I'm destined to get 2 analogies wrong and 2 antonyms wrong at least on every test just because regardless of how many words I seem to learn, there are always a few that comes up on the test that I don't know.
Is it just a matter of luck? Should I pray that I just happen to not get words I don't know on Tuesday, does anyone have any ideas as to what I could possibly do to tighten it up I guess? I'm not having any trouble at all on reading comp or sentence completion (maybe in those 2 sections I'll only get 1 wrong in total)... but analogies and antonyms seem to trip me up regardless of how much I practice.
Sorta ditto for math. I'll maybe come across 1-2 problems at most on a test that I don't know how to do, but then I'll always get a small handful of problems wrong due to careless mistakes. That hasn't really changed either. I'll get a few wrong, then when I go review the answers I realize it was just something dumb (like forgetting to plug in a fraction to check if the two columns are equal in all cases, etc).
Basically, I feel like the only thing preventing me from performing how I want is something that continued studying can't really help - if that makes sense.... has anyone else ever dealt with this / remedied it?
To try and describe my problem, it's as if I don't have that precision and consistency. Even though I generally know all the material and all the words, I'm forever bound to make a few errors. Think I can fix that problem in the 1.5 days left until the test?
I have 2 practice exams left that I plan on doing tomorrow, then just a few review sections, and I dunno what else ....
Just felt like BLAWGIN IT UP
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It's more or less SAT version #2.
If you studied your butt off for SATs and got similar stuff wrong it's likely you'll get similar stuff wrong on GREs. It is a bit of the luck of teh draw in the words and analogies you get though... the more you know the easier it will be obviously. Don't overthink it too much. Get lots of quality sleep. etc. You know the drill.
I wouldn't worry about GREs too much becuase any graduate program is going to be moreso looking at your grades and letters of rec and essays.
As long as you have average or above average GRE for acceptance to any program you apply for you should be more than fine if your other stuff holds up well (essays, rec letters, college grades).
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i didn't study for the SAT for more than 30 minutes.
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I'm taking the GRE on Wednesday. I am pretty worried about the verbal. From what I've seen, there will be a lot of words I don't know. I'm also not sure how to feel about the adaptive testing method, and the fact that there are only 30 questions for verbal. Have you ever taken the test before? Apparently one has to spend more than an hour on the writing sections before seeing any multiple choice questions. Given that the writing scores are the least important.. this arrangement seems inconvenient to me.
I studied a lot more for the SAT and I did quite well on it. I definitely liked the opportunity to check/rethink all my answers in the last 10 or so minutes of allotted time. In the GRE however, there is no going back at all. It frustrates me that you can't take a realistic practice test because of some of these factors. I'm worried that my score will be terrible =/
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I took it and got a 1320, ideally I want 1500, but realistically aiming for at 1400 ...
Problems I had on the GRE (that I don't think I'll have now after practice) : being short on time. I get caught up in the fact that you can't skip questions and such, but my pacing has gotten a lot better (although it hasn't affected my accuracy at all apparently).
I like being able to jump around on tests, or go back and change answers, etc. Sorta an added twist that complicates the GRE.
I'm also more worried about verbal than math even though I'm technically better at verbal, but kljeglek!
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Words are pretty much luck. Math should be something you should be able to get 800 easy, or at least 780 which is one careless mistake. By this point in time you should have gotten a pretty good feel for the format and strategies for solving each verbal problem and have a good idea on how to solve any quant problem if you've taken a good number of practice tests.
In 1.5 days there's not much you can do besides do practice tests to get comfortable with the time constraints and format and cram a few more words that might show up on the test. Just fyi, percent matters just as if not more than score. I got 800 quant, 740 verbal when I took it (lucky with words) and 800 quant is 94 percentile while 740 verbal is 99 percentile. If you get a 660 its still in the 94 percentile for verbal while its 62 for quant.
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Verbal is pretty much luck if you don't know the words already.
As far as silly errors: as long as you can keep vaguely decent track of time (I actually couldn't), you shouldn't be averse to ignoring the fact that there is normally a "trick" and just do the fucking math properly. Write out what you're given, what you need to know, make it a formula, and just solve that shit.
But pay attention to the timer. Missed questions are penalized incredibly heavily.
[edit] Also the adaptive testing method, from a psychometric perspective, is fucking stupid when you look at its performance over only an individual test. Over thousands of tests it will outperform written tests in terms of accuracy/time required, but for certain individuals (namely, people who are prone to careless errors sometimes) it will generate wildly variant scores because it simply doesn't have the number of questions it would need to judge their skill accurately.
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Braavos36362 Posts
On December 27 2010 17:11 Xeris wrote:
Sorta ditto for math. I'll maybe come across 1-2 problems at most on a test that I don't know how to do, but then I'll always get a small handful of problems wrong due to careless mistakes. That hasn't really changed either. I'll get a few wrong, then when I go review the answers I realize it was just something dumb (like forgetting to plug in a fraction to check if the two columns are equal in all cases, etc).
Basically, I feel like the only thing preventing me from performing how I want is something that continued studying can't really help - if that makes sense.... has anyone else ever dealt with this / remedied it?
To try and describe my problem, it's as if I don't have that precision and consistency. Even though I generally know all the material and all the words, I'm forever bound to make a few errors. Think I can fix that problem in the 1.5 days left until the test?
It's not really "something dumb" when you get stuff wrong on the GRE math section because avoiding careless mistakes is exactly what it's testing. None of the problems are particularly difficult, you just have to be focused and consistent. That's what it's testing you. If you get stuff wrong because you overlooked something, that's not an anomaly, you're just not as good as you want to be at the test.
A few people can just perfect the math section always, their brains are wired like this. For us regular people, there's really no way to remedy this except to practice until you get everything right. Practice, practice, and more practice. Practice until you can do all the GRE type math questions in your sleep. That way you will never make careless mistakes.
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When the universe of test material is so large, I don't think you can cram it all in shortly before the exam -- a good exam is resistant to hard cramming because there is so much to understand.
I haven't taken the GREs - probably will in the future (senior in college but not going for grad school now). Skimming through a list of GRE-level vocab, I think I know lots of them and recognize some others, but it is primarily from memory of experienced literature and conversations that I can confidently recall the meaning of a word. Looking back at SAT study, I have since forgotten many of the words that I crammed and retained the ones that appeared in candid experience. The only tough words that I know from the list are ones that I've picked up listening and reading news, politics, philosophy, debate, etc.: rarely from a personal conversation but definitely a routine experience nonetheless. You cannot cram for that kind of knowledge, and flash cards especially have been shown to be good in the short run but retain poorly in the long run.
As for last second study, I think just about every clinical study on memory and performance says that if you don't have it in your head 24 hours before the exam, you're probably not going to be able to recall it anyway (at least not if the exam is tough). Also consider that another few hours is a drop in the bucket considering how much time you've already spent. The additional hours of study aren't worth as much as a good night's sleep and a good breakfast.
If you're not recalling information that you think you know, then it at least means that the knowledge isn't second nature to you. Learning knowledge involves a commitment from tenuous short-term memory to long-term memory and this is a physical transfiguration that is best made by experience and conceptualization.
One of the reasons why the multiple-choice format is controversial is that it clues tenuous understanding. So if you have forgotten a word's definition but have an idea of how it is used you won't be totally lost, but it doesn't discriminate between weak understanding and strong understanding as some "open-ended" exam formats might. And it rewards cramming since you can get smart shortly before the exam and forget everything years later.
If you're looking for an alternative way to approach studying or answering, maybe try just picking up a wordy piece of classic literature from Project Gutenberg and try to paint a larger cognitive picture of how words might appear.
For math, I think you just gotta go back and study this stuff in its entirety because if you don't know your shit then you just don't know your shit, and they can choose any little fact out of an entire curriculum to quiz you on (although most of the advanced math questions appear to be conceptual in nature based on an understanding of the symbols and terminology). I just read through an 08-09 math section and it looks pretty straightforward (I'm secure with my linear algebra) but there are definitely a few terminology-based questions that I could look up in hindsight. Really, only taking more math classes would be the most efficient way to prepare for the unexpected. I've taken a fair share of college level math so most of these questions have pretty "intuitive" answers to me, or I at least know how I would approach them. Others, I just don't know, and I know Wikipedia isn't going to explain it comprehensively enough.
In response to your worry about stupid mistakes... I don't entirely buy that for the math section at least. From what I read most of the questions appear to be more about seeing the underlying concept and translating that into a straightforward answer (or easily discarding the wrong solutions). If you're off by a coefficient on a solution then it could mean that you slogged through the math mechanically and got a mistake that they bait you with in one of the wrong solutions -- but the correct solution might have been more easily discovered by a quicker or more thorough grasp on the background material. Sometimes knowing side facts can help you quickly reduce the problem down to something simpler. Other times a good strategy is to lay down some hard facts you are certain of that you can use as constraints to knock out wrong answers.
At this point you've already worked so hard, just rest, get good sleep and breakfast, and just warm your brain up before the exam with a couple of thinking problems but don't expect to conceptualize new information overnight. Finally, don't stress about the effort you're putting in now. Your success on this kind of an exam is mostly determined by how you've spent your last ~4 years, not what you've done in the last couple of months.
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From what grad students I've talked to have told me - the GRE is basically a math test that happens to have vocab on it. Don't miss anything on the math, don't worry about the vocab. Nobody does well on the english sections.
Honestly, I don't think there's any point in worrying about it. Either you know stuff or you don't and no amount of cramming is going to change that. Just have a good mindset going into the test and focus on the math. The GRE is about as important as the SAT, which is to say, not very as long as you don't completely fail on it.
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My only advice is to look online for leaked questions... GRE is an ability test so there is probably very little you can do in two days
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On December 27 2010 20:15 Hot_Bid wrote:Show nested quote +On December 27 2010 17:11 Xeris wrote:
Sorta ditto for math. I'll maybe come across 1-2 problems at most on a test that I don't know how to do, but then I'll always get a small handful of problems wrong due to careless mistakes. That hasn't really changed either. I'll get a few wrong, then when I go review the answers I realize it was just something dumb (like forgetting to plug in a fraction to check if the two columns are equal in all cases, etc).
Basically, I feel like the only thing preventing me from performing how I want is something that continued studying can't really help - if that makes sense.... has anyone else ever dealt with this / remedied it?
To try and describe my problem, it's as if I don't have that precision and consistency. Even though I generally know all the material and all the words, I'm forever bound to make a few errors. Think I can fix that problem in the 1.5 days left until the test? It's not really "something dumb" when you get stuff wrong on the GRE math section because avoiding careless mistakes is exactly what it's testing. None of the problems are particularly difficult, you just have to be focused and consistent. That's what it's testing you. If you get stuff wrong because you overlooked something, that's not an anomaly, you're just not as good as you want to be at the test. A few people can just perfect the math section always, their brains are wired like this. For us regular people, there's really no way to remedy this except to practice until you get everything right. Practice, practice, and more practice. Practice until you can do all the GRE type math questions in your sleep. That way you will never make careless mistakes.
Yea, my biggest problem is that consistency T__T
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gl xeris!
I think there's a magical state of mind where you can start answering verbal questions completely accurately...at least, it happened to me after I did about 8 practice tests (SATs, though, not GRE  ) and could see the basic pattern behind how test-writers write their multiple choice answers. Maybe if you spend a little bit of time looking at real tests and finding the pattern, it'll help you bypass some of the verbal?
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On December 28 2010 03:07 hazelynut wrote:gl xeris! I think there's a magical state of mind where you can start answering verbal questions completely accurately...at least, it happened to me after I did about 8 practice tests (SATs, though, not GRE ) and could see the basic pattern behind how test-writers write their multiple choice answers. Maybe if you spend a little bit of time looking at real tests and finding the pattern, it'll help you bypass some of the verbal?
I've figured out reading comp and sentence completion totally, and have a MUCH better feel for analogies, but still manage to get 1-2 wrong somehow grahhh!
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And then there's the people like me that studied for a grand total of 0 minutes, and got a 2320 (on a 2400 scale). To be honest half of what they test, and the way the test is designed, is if you can find the patterns. The math section is obviously a huge example of that, as even the most complex of problems they can give you can logic your way through. As for verbal, and "crazy words", the biggest help is learning prefixes and affixes. Paying attention to those takes you so far with big words. At no point will you be asked something you need a specific formula for, or a word that can't be broken down.
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How does the SAT compare to the GRE? I just finished taking the SAT, and I don't want to restress about the GRE when I'm in college.
College sounds scary ;;
Edit: well, obviously I'm going to HAVE to restress about the GRE because I have to take it :'<
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I feel like the vocabulary in the GRE is much more difficult than it was on the SAT, but that's my opinion. The math is slightly more difficult - actually I guess the GRE is just trickier than the SAT imo, I did pretty well on the SAT without any studying, but have struggled with GRE stuff a bit oo~
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Personally if I were looking at the GRE as an evaluator, I'd look at the writing section more. Being able to cohesively identify holes in arguments and come up with your own arguments in a set time limit and explain them clearly is a very important asset.
Honestly, I don't see why something more like the LSAT is used widely. Logical reasoning is critical to every field, whereas something like... vocabulary... seems pointless to test, especially under uncontrolled conditions (being able to study however long you want for it).
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EPT
