The GRE

I took the LSAT 24 years ago. But my advice is to treat the studying as a job and if you are serious, go to a Kaplan class or something else.

No doubt you are smart, but keep in mind that you are competing against new grads, youngsters, who have nothing better than to study and their distraction is not a mortgage/rent/food but the beach/ski slopes. I'm not trying to discourage you, just warn you to not think that a study guide is enough. I understand that times are tough and you may not be able to afford a class. But then study each day like its a job and stick to it. Avoid at all costs the thinking that this is just a backup plan. If you do that, you are seriously handicapping yourself.

My view is if you are going to do it, do it with your best shot, leave no doubt when you leave the test that you did your best and let the chips fall where they may.

Good luck and go for it!

 

Just bringing this topic up again.

Not every grad program requires GRE scores (like some ed programs). And if you do take them, they at least are good for five years. Alas, they change the exam often. I've taken them twice and they were both different (most recently in October 2010) and will change again soon.

Best of luck to anyone going back to school. After getting a BA in journalism I was in grad school a looooooooong time.

 

I took the GRE in November. Now granted I was only two years removed from undergraduate school, but http://www.ets.org/gre/ has some fantastic study guides. I used them in preparation for the test. It also has a bunch of pre-test that you can take and so on and so forth. The hardest part for me was the math section. Lots of geometry and algebra that I didn't remember that well. The writing portion saved me.

 

I took the computer-based GRE 12 or so years ago. At that time, you couldn't go back and reconsider questions you had already answered when subsequent questions made it clear that your earlier answers were off the mark.

I'm told that's been changed.

I took the test with no advance preparation after driving about seven hours the day before. Made it into grad school, got my master's, yet still returned to newspapering. So, obviously, higher education didn't take.

 

What I learned two years ago: Kaplan + ETS.org study guides = good enough GRE for any major university.

Afterward, my brother wrote a section for Kaplan's medical test prep. He had many strict test-based standards and would be judged not by the soundness of his lesson but by the applicability to the test, so I give it a biased thumbs-up.

 

My experience with the GRE is a bit dated (spring 2009), but I was surprised at how hard the vocabulary was for someone who made a living as a writer. The math, on the other hand, was a breeze.

 

Double-check with the schools your looking at and make sure they want the GRE and not the GMAT (I think it's the GMAT). I was looking at one school that required both the GRE and the GMAT (they were quickly eliminated).

I got the general Kaplan book and then also got the Kaplan math workbook (as the last math class I took was 10 years ago and I wasn't particularly good at it then. I had basically forgotten anything that had to do with geometry.) Both were pretty good help.

What you have to remember is with the computer-based test, it will take your answers and change the difficulty accordingly. If you answer things correctly, your difficulty will go up. So those of us who reached English questions that made us go...wtf does THAT mean?, it's because we did fairly good on the first few questions.

Oh, and you should have taken it this year. They revamped the GRE this year and made it a lot harder. Like, they're actually letting you use a calculator on the math section.

I got very similar scores to my friend (who got into the same program as I did) but we also have fairly good resumes as well. (One of my Facebook friends was bragging about how much better he did on the GRE than me and he didn't get in anywhere for his graduate school, aside from his alma mater.) So the GRE doesn't really make that big of a deal. I think a lot of it is like the standardized testing to get into college. Some schools will just look to basically make sure you take it and look at the rest of your portfolio for more weightier things to base you on.

 

I'd take it if I had a clue what I should go back to school for. That's the tough part: not wasting more years on a worthless degree. Yep, I'm a guy with a lousy journalism BA.

 

I got a couple of those old test prep books back in 89 when I took the GRE. Went 770/770/790 for Math/Verbal/Qual. Analysis.
Since I was a hard science major, I took the GRE for that subject. Got the first question. Knew nothing about the next 99. My roommate (now a PhD in marine biology from Duke) had already taken his GREs, saw me come back in the apartment, looked at the clock and said, "what the fuck? you only left an hour ago?"
I said, "Yep. Let's go get something to eat."

 

I tell people I have a Masters in Journalism and they look at me like I just told them I passed the GED on my third try.

 

I know the feeling. I'm strongly considering going back to school as part of a career change. My sob story is that I was passed over for a promotion recently, and that's pretty much the last straw for me with journalism. I just can't keep living with the disappointment and the poisonous atmosphere of the place.

 

I don't remember a damned thing from the exam. Less of high school geometry.

Just that it was an inconvenience.