I hate the GRE already (non-Amerkins, ignore)

my advice: if you are taking the GRE general exam at a computer where they monitor you, look up at the surveillance camera every so often and make evil faces.

I don't know if that really works, or if it was just nerves, but I managed to stay awake through the whole thing the next morning.

Good luck, though!!

I hope they don't replace it with a tougher equiv.

I've been hearing rumors about an essay..How in the Hell does a computer grade it? Like Tracer,I have an overpowering fear of the GRE. I had a dream in that I'm talking to the Dean of my perspective Grad school. He tells me that I'm not accepted and that I would have gotten in on a full tuition scholarship if I would have scored 10 points higher on the analytical section.

I'm applying to English lit. programs -- ironingly enough though, my best results are coming from Math, on the last practice exam I got a total of 5 wrong out of 60.

I'm using a rather dreadful prep book right now, it's by Arco and it suxorz.

And actually, the Analytical Writing sounds like good news for me. I'm hella good on these kinds of tests. Ah, back in High School, during the USHAP test, I was the only one who didn't complain about the DBQ prompt.

If it's switching to Analytical Writing, though, I wouldn't be surprised if they started caring more. (You'd be surprised, or maybe not, at the number of students graduate English programs accept only to discover that said students cannot write worth a damn -- because the criteria which got them in didn't really test for the ability, beyond the admissions essay which a friend helped them revise over a few months.)

Oh God. It'll be like a fucking law-school final exam, then. And law-school finals are about as much fun as having yer fingernails pulled out with a pair of hot pliers. And the biggest part of the problem with essays is the subjectivity factor -- the GRE Analytical was at least objective with right-or-wrong answers, while with essays yer totally at the mercy of whoever's reading the essay.

Advice: take the General GRE before 9/30/02.

http://archive.salon.com/mwt/feature/2002/06/05/scorer/

It's entitled "We hung the most dimwitted essays on the wall," and paints a portrait of test graders as meagerly-paid ($6/hr.) liberal arts grads who skim through tests to meet deadlines.

So what has anyone here done with respect to preparation?
Prep courses? Prep Books? Just keep your mind clear and do your thing at the test? Though this would be for art history programs, I figure I'll have to revisit the math tutor who got me through highschool. This seems like nothing more than a big bureaucratic, money wasting hassle, but is necessary if I were to go to school in the States (I even know someone that went to England in part because he didn't want to deal with GRE's), and I'm going to have to do it this summer, so...

You'll be fine. Just give yourself enough time before the test (6-8 weeks) to take a full practice test, identify your strengths and weaknesses, study up on math/vocab lists for a few weeks, take another practice test, repeat and repeat.

A potential problem is the writing section, if you think you might have problems with it. That was the weakest section of my GRE score. It's difficult to address, imo, because you can't just take a practice test and get immediate feedback on how you did on the essay like you can with the math/verbal sections, because the grading of the writing is subjective, tough to self-evaluate, and most people don't have a professional GRE essay-scorer on hand. Also, at least for me, it was way harder to push myself to write a practice essay for 45 minutes in the first place.

for the verbal the big thing is vocab, vocab, vocab. also brush up on how analogies work on the GREs/SATs - usually you have to contrive some sentence and plug in the words in, i.e. "ILXing is a form of procrastination as walking is a form of transportation" or something. if you're applying to art history programs I wouldn't worry too much about the math...? for the reading comprehension part iirc the texts are pretty academic so you might want to read a few books of art criticism or something to get used to dealing with academic language in a quick way

for the writing, my princeton review book told me that the number one correlation w/ high scores was length. so just be prepared to bullshit a lot. IIRC the test-graders are usually just starving grad students & high school english teachers moonlighting, who have to grade hundreds of essays in a short amount of test, so as long as you write something that scans well in 5 minutes, you'll be fine.

also when you do the writing part you should ask them if you can use two computers, and write two essays using both hands, to intimidate the other test takers.

Pointless but true anecdote, (and what I blame my relatively low writing score on) when I was studying for the GRE I ended up "practicing" writing by reading the sample essays from my prep book and looking at the differences between perfect scores and averaging scoring essays. One of the sample essays was on the topic of smoking and if should be banned in restaurants or not. For some reason I ended up reading all the way through the "perfect" essay several times, probably because it was the first sample essay in the book.

By chance, on my actual GRE test, my essay question was THE EXACT SAME TOPIC, about smoking and whether it should be banned in restaurants or not! It ended up reaallly messing with me because all I could think about were the arguments in the sample essay, and how it was put together, which was still fresh in mind, and I (irrationally) worried that I would be caught for cheating or something, like they would realize I had lifted my argument from a book. I ended up wasting like 15 minutes rewriting the intro over and over and biting my nails. What a fucking mess.

if you're applying to art history programs I wouldn't worry too much about the math...?

totally otm. If the program you're applying to won't require math, the admissions office should place very little, if any, weight on your math score.

I took it in December & I didn't start studying until two weeks beforehand. I really wish I'd have started sooner, so my main advice would be to start ASAP. What helped me most, actually, was reading about how the test itself worked. I appreciated the little practice test program they sent me when I paid to schedule the test. I just felt more comfortable being able to practice the test how it would actually be administered (via a computer program with this ugly, pixelated 'hey I just discovered the gui' look to it). I feel silly saying this, but the book I used for studying was GRE for Dummies, which had a lot of good advice on strategy. Her perspective on math and the essay were pretty good, too. I say pick up whatever book has the tone you are most comfortable with.

Worst thing about the GRE: you feel like you're doing great and then it throws some question at you like 'ok simp which of these numbers is 10% of 90: a. 340 b. 22 c. 9' Meaning you fucked up hardcore somewhere!

in a short amount of testtime

Also, if you're worried about your math score, don't call my brother, who will say, "I could have taken that in seventh grade and earned an 800, you must be an idiot."

Her perspective on math and the essay were pretty good, too. I say pick up whatever book has the tone you are most comfortable with.

yeah this is otm, I always choose princeton review books because they recognize that the GRE is this really pointless exercise & teach you how to game it instead of harboring silly pretensions that it actually assesses anything useful

the best prep is just doing as many practice tests as you can imo - just getting used to style of questions they ask will give you the biggest score boost and improve your time. there is definitely a way the test "thinks" and being able to recognize patterns in the questions is a big help

Thanks a lot, all.
Luckily I write and reason pretty well, and have a decent vocabulary, though it looks like I'm going to have to order a copy of Dr. Marvin Monroe's Vocabulary Builder tape, or something like that. Looking at sample questions on the GRE website this is a lot more like one of those online "test your iq!" quizzes than a real sense of determining knowledge, either way I'm a bit more reassured.

do some kind of studying. when I took the GRE I took it cold with no prep. I highly do not recommend doing this.

So this test is computerized, or what?

Yeah, it's on a computer, using software that looks like it was written in 1994. And it has some stressful elements. I found a nice summary of how it works:

There are two types of computer tests: computer based and computer adaptive. Computer based tests are best described as paper tests in digital format. Everybody gets the same questions in a predetermined order and you can often skip around within a test section. Computer Adaptive Tests (CAT) are completely different. [note: GRE is the latter type]

A CAT is administered on computer, a format unfamiliar to most test takers. There is no more writing on the test booklet, you can only see one question at a time, and the reading passages don’t fit on the screen so you cannot see the entire text at once. Students have to use scratch paper to take notes and scroll down to read passages. But the biggest difference between the CAT and the paper test is in the way the test works.

You know how a paper and pencil test works. You can answer the questions in any order, skip around a section, and change your answer by erasing the mark on your grid and filling in another oval. However, on a computer adaptive test, the test decides which questions you see based on your performance earlier in the section. You have to answer the question on the screen before you can move to the next question, and once you answer a question and move on, you can’t go back to change it.

To find your score, the CAT looks at the difficulty level of the questions you saw and estimates your ability level. This estimate is then converted to a scaled score of 200-800.

You get better scores for doing well on harder questions. So my advice is: spend all the time you need on the first 5 or so questions bcz they basically determine your difficulty. If you fuck up the first questions, it adjusts the difficulty down to easier questions that give you lower points.

They have a practice test program that looks/acts just like the actual GRE test (plus it scores you)...I recommend doing that thing a couple times a week so you get comfy with it & how it works.

Holy Crap! Tomorrow! :S

I hope my prolix will be voluble enough!

this test is such a joke, you'll do fine!

protip: get some sleep, eat some breakfast!

(not that I did either before my test. for some reason I didn't sleep a wink and threw up a bunch in the morning despite not really worrying too much about it beforehand)

Thanks for the reassurance. Good thing I booked a test a 5:30 PM, though I should probably hit the proverbial hay.

For future GRE takers my advice to you: a great way to learn vocabulary is to write a short story with as much unnecessary diction as possible. I wrote a fairly dashing adaptation of an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents (80's version) that I saw the night before: very effective.

I remember the most difficult part being the reading comprehension - long-ish and complicated academic texts, a big step up from the SAT.

otherwise the analogies, antonyms, sentence completion sections are kind of "either you know it or you don't" and are fairly easy.

Hey - good luck! Take ZS's advice if possible and don't stress too much. It's really not that bad. I was most worried about the math part and that turned out to be much easier than I expected.

If I take a quick shot at the GRE this year with very little prep, will schools always then see that score as well as any improved future score, and think worse of me?

I don't think schools form an opinion on a score. If you're unhappy, take it again, a luxury people don't have with the SAT.

Are those pay-for test taking courses worth it, will they boost my score?

Oh Christ.

How to not give up? My basic arithmetic is pretty crap and that slows me down so much on the algebra. So many silly mistakes.