GRE

I'm either looking for a recent thread if there has been one (nothing came up in a search) or some advice from those of you who have taken the GRE.

My plan is to study up and take it as early as January to March. I've ordered a transcript of my bachelor's degree, and I'm contacting old professors about recommendation letters. I'm outlining my admission essays as well. I'd like to start a graduate program sometime in 2010.

I am soooooo getting out of journalism.

 

Don't. Buy. Kaplan. Books. They don't do any good.

 

If you're a journalist, brush up on your math skills. Basic algebra, geometry, trig, etc. That part kicked my ass on the GRE.

 

What are you planning to go to grad school for? As Cadet said, you'll need to brush up on your math, but if you're going for any kind of humanity/social science like I did, it's not nearly as important as the verbal sections. I didn't do so hot on the math, and I still got into most of the schools to which I applied. That being said, don't blow the math off--it's to your credit if you can show schools that you're well-rounded.

 

Don't know much about the GRE, but when I took the GMAT I skipped the Kaplan books and bought the Princeton Review "Cracking the GMAT." Had some pretty good strategies and four tests.

I can imagine their GRE books are about the same.

 

Math, math, math. You'll be fine on the rest (I bet), especially the writing.
Don't buy any books. Check them out from the library.
When you register, they send you a CD that has some practice tests as well. Use it.

 

get as many practice tests as possible. and i don't recall a "writing" section on the gre i took. is that a recent change since 1999?

 

I don't know when they added it, but it was there last year.
If you're a journalist, don't even waste your time preparing for that portion. I had perfect scores on it and I'm no Hemingway.

 

how do they score it? seems it would be very subjective.

 

I guess they have three people read what you've written. They score it on a scale up to six and you get the average.
One portion is basically writing a column. They give you a few topics to choose from and you take your favorite. The other is when they have you critique something someone else has written. You basically find the holes in the logic of what was written (which comes from an actual article, pamphlet, etc.). The hard part on that one is just to stick to logic and not get too mean, because they give you some ridiculous shit to critique.

 

Punk, take the test with no preparation, but with taking it again in mind. See what your weaknesses are and what you need to work on. Or, you might just score well the first time. I did.

The practice tests online are very much like the real deal. Take one or two of those before your real dry run. It's far less overwhelming if you know a little bit about what to expect. But it's not that overwhelming in the first place.

A decent writer should get 6/6 on the writing section. They're more looking for, sentence structure, grasp of grammar, etc., than cohesive thoughts. Of course, they won't hurt.

 

When I took it six years ago, I was literally guessing on the math portion. Got into grad school, but when you're going for a communication program they don't seem to care too much about your math score.