I have been meaning to write this for a long time. But lately I have been getting lot of enquiries regarding GRE. Hence, I thought this is the best time to share my thoughts on this. Oh yeah, I just came up with this title, as I wanted people to feel that GRE can be made easy and it is not as greasy as it sounds. Well do not ask me how the word greasy would fit in, it is just play of words. Sorry if it does not humor you.
Anyways, GRE is not as scary as people want you to think. It definitely is very different from all the exams you have given in your life. However, if you know how it works and if you have a strategy to attack it, you are well on your way to glory! This is one exam that will always remain very close to my heart. It is not a stretch when I say that I felt truly empty after giving GRE, as I did not have anything challenging to do after it. Infact I remember very clearly how I used to play with my classmates even a month after the exam was over. We used to ask each other, words and their meaning, mostly from Barrons Word list. And GRE is special because, it disclosed my writing abilities to me. I got 5.5/6 which I thought was great at that time.
So coming down to the exam itself, as everyone knows ETS administers GRE in computerized format. It is called Computerized Adaptive Test (CAT). This was one of the three CATs that I managed to bell successfully so far, and my one feeble attempt at belling the toughest of CATs was a huge bungle. Well you know what I am talking about. Anyway, as the name suggests it is an adaptive test, meaning the computer throws questions at you, however, they are not randomly chosen, but chosen so that the questions try to reflect your exact capabilities. Simply put, the computer assumes you are an average student, so the first question is relatively easy and depending on how you answer it, the computer selects the next question from a vast pool of questions and the difficulty level of successive question varies depending on your performace one the previous one. For instance, if you answered the first question correctly, the next question will be slightly tougher. On the other hand, if you got the first one wrong, the computer scales down your level and throws a relatively simpler question to see if you can crack it. Head spinning - No - I think it is so cool. And an important thing is you cannot bookmark a question and come back to it later, you have to answer the question on the screen before you can move on to the next.
I am not going to go into the structure of the exam, as you can find it from the ETS website. Moreover, I am not even sure if the format is still the same. But am going to tell you few important things which I will come handy when you take the exam yourself. I will also tell you what to do and what not to do. Please please give it some thought even if you do not want to follow exactly what I say. I know things that worked for me may not suit your style, but it will not hurt to have few ammos on your sleeve.
How I did it?
Please book your dates well in advance. I booked my exam date in May and I took the exam in August. It is very crowded out there, so have two more choices so that you can select any one if one is not available. Also those in college, make sure you book a date when you do not have other exams, for GRE is stressful enough, why make it more stressful? The next thing I did was to work with the book Word Power Made Easy by Norman Lewis. I do not mind repeating this, but it was one book that made me fall in love with the language. Ofcourse you do not have to go that extreme, but it sure does make things easier when you have to soak up about 3500 words, and makes it pretty interesting to learn new words. I finished this book within few weeks and then started cramming the word list. Sure it is boring, but then it is very very useful. You can make flashcards and review them often or play with your mates like I did. This is more useful because you are bound to remember words which you discuss with others. In the mean time start brushing up your 10th std Math. The Quant section should be a breeze for us brainy Indians. So that is how my prep went. Word List everyday with few Math thrown in to add spice to my day! Make sure you revise your word list atleast once, yes buddy, I mean A-Z, every single word. Or if you are struggling for time, make sure you know atleast the big ones, like A, C, E I, P, R, S, T by heart, which means you should be able to spit out the meaning, antonym and anything you know about the word, even if some one wakes you up at 3 a.m. Sounds like cliche, but well sadly that is the kind of preparation needed. Oh yeah, the toughest part in Verbal section is Reading Comprehension. It is difficult because the passages are obscure, dead boring, will put you to sleep, and will make you hate English. So I suggest strongly that you read the Editorial section of good newspapers like The Hindu, The Indian Express or any paper that you can lay your hands on. I religiously pored over the Editorial in The Hindu literally everyday and trust me, you will begin to see most of the words in Barrons and you will have proof that people after all do use these 'Big' words....
After laying the groundwork, I started giving the mock exams. Give as many as you can. It will be terribly boring, but that is the only chance you have got. Practice, practice and practice. Do exams from The Big Book, exams from Kaplan (the toughest of the lot), Cambridge, Princeton, Barrons or any exam. Make sure you do these exams on the computer, as this will give you reading practice, that is reading from the computer. The fianl 10-14 days leading up to the exam should be dedicated towards exams and yeah just keep revising the word list. You must be wondering why I have not talked about the Analytical Writing Section yet. To be honest I just kept putting it off, so one day, the day before the exam, I finally realized that I had done nothing about it. Phew ! All I did was to go through Arco's Essay book, the day before the exam, It did not take me much time to go through it, and by lunch time, I had written two essays, one each for Issue and Argument. That was all I did as far as the essays were concerned. And when I received my official score sheet I was totally surprised because I had gotten 5.5, whereas people I thought were better in English than me, scored 4-4.5, some got 5. So trust me, do not get worked up over the essays, they are the easiest. However, do not put it off untill the last moment and I assure you go through the Essay book atleast once and practice writing. Oh yeah make sure you use the writing software that comes with Powerprep and do not use MS Word or note pad, because the facilities in the GRE software are limited. I have a .pdf file of the essay book and in case you need it just e-mail, I will be more than happy to send it to you.
So here are some tips and suggestions:
1) Pace yourself, spend more time on the initial questions. Make sure you get the first few right, say the first 5-6 questions, but definitely the first 3. It worked against me as I got my second question wrong in the Quant section and I could not improve my score beyond 750. Believe me it is very easy to get 800 in Quant.
2) Answer all the questions. Never, never, never leave even one question unanswered. I had 5 min to answer the last 8 questions in Verbal section and I did not know this secret at that time, but still started clicking feverishly till I answered all the questions. Ofcourse, I got only 580, but my classmate who is zillion times better in English than me got only 530 because she left about 5 or 6 questions unanswered.
3) If you are stuck with one question and you think you have done everything, but still not sure of the correct answer, try to eliminate as many choices as possible, then make an educated guess and move on. This is not the time to prove the computer that you can crack a very tough one, just guess and move on. Infact if it is a tough question then you have probably done well enough to earn it, so give yourself a pat and move on. However, this is not always true, and dont try to play guessing games.
4) Decide on the universities you are applying to. Yeah the time to do research on uni's is before GRE and not after it. You save hundreds of dollars, if you are applying to say minimum of 8 unis. The ETS reports your score for free of cost, to 5 unis that you mention while taking the test. So for the remaining unis you have to pay $25 to ETS for each uni, that you want to apply to.
5) Do not take any exam on the day before the exam. It could be demoralizing if you get bad score and give you false hopes if you get too good a score. However, the Powerprep is fairly an accurate estimate and your actual score will about 50 points more or less than what you get in Powerprep. Just relax on the eve of the exam. But if you feel upto it, then go through the word list or do some math, topics that are difficult for you. But do not try to learn anything new and I stress it do not give mock exams on this day.
6) Cover yourself in layers on the day of the exam and this point cannot be stressed more. For if you are not comfortable in the room, then the chances are good that it will affect your score badly and you wil not want to repent it later.
7) Ofcourse, this is not the day to practice the Indian Standard Time business. Please be in the exam centre atleast 30 min before the scheduled start time of your test. The process takes fair amount of time and the last thing you want is to get panicky. If you are not sure about the location of the centre, try visiting it atleast once before your exam day, even if you think you know the city very well. You don't want surprises in this front.
8) Take some snacks and water with you. Make use of the break time and take a bite or two. Stretch yourself.
9) Please be aware that the money you pay ETS is mostly used for research purposes. That is the precise reason why you have to answer an additional section, called the Experimental section, however, you will not know which is the experimental and which is the actual one, nor will you know whether you will get Verbal or Quant as experimental one. For instance, I got two Quant sections and one Verbal, one Quant was terribly easy, the other Quant was very tough. To this day I have no idea which was experimental, but I assume the easy one was experimental. Do not try to second the guess the computer and waste your time on this. Just answer whatever question it throws at you, earnestly.
10) Memorize the directions for all the question types. Even one second that you use to see the directions once the exam starts will be counted against you.
11) Finally, few thoughts on AWA. For Issue, write down pros and cons for the given topic. Then start typing madly, and write few sentences on each point. Two or three should be more than enough. Once you have written about 3 paragraphs (One para for each point), then compose the final para. Then only write the introduction. There is a reason for this, because your essay could evolve as you write, so that way you will not waste time changing the intro, and you use that time to edit your essay. For Argument, try to notice atleast three flaws. The essay topics are so structured that there are atleast 3 flaws that you can identify easily. Write them down and then compose three paras, one for each point. Then compose the concluding para and finally the intro para. However, the intro for Argument is fairly routine and you can even decide on the intro para even before your exam. Still I felt it made sense to compose it at the end. Make sure that all paras are fairly equal in length and it is enough if you write two are three sentences for each para.
Finally, this has gone long, very long than I intended. But if you took something useful out of it, then am very glad. I have lots and lots of Cd's with me, with tonnes of material and loads of practice exams. So if you want them just write to me. I will be very glad to send them to you. I do not want to charge anything for these, because I myself got them from many sources. I even had to pay Rs300/- for two cd's that I bought from some one in geocities. Howver, I do not intend to make money out of this, I just want people to do well in their exams. However, I will charge you for Cd's and postage. But if you are in Chennai, and if you can bring your own cd's then you can drop in and get the stuff burned. If you want the cd's please write to me at cooldudesanky@gmail.com.
All the best for your exams!
Anyways, GRE is not as scary as people want you to think. It definitely is very different from all the exams you have given in your life. However, if you know how it works and if you have a strategy to attack it, you are well on your way to glory! This is one exam that will always remain very close to my heart. It is not a stretch when I say that I felt truly empty after giving GRE, as I did not have anything challenging to do after it. Infact I remember very clearly how I used to play with my classmates even a month after the exam was over. We used to ask each other, words and their meaning, mostly from Barrons Word list. And GRE is special because, it disclosed my writing abilities to me. I got 5.5/6 which I thought was great at that time.
So coming down to the exam itself, as everyone knows ETS administers GRE in computerized format. It is called Computerized Adaptive Test (CAT). This was one of the three CATs that I managed to bell successfully so far, and my one feeble attempt at belling the toughest of CATs was a huge bungle. Well you know what I am talking about. Anyway, as the name suggests it is an adaptive test, meaning the computer throws questions at you, however, they are not randomly chosen, but chosen so that the questions try to reflect your exact capabilities. Simply put, the computer assumes you are an average student, so the first question is relatively easy and depending on how you answer it, the computer selects the next question from a vast pool of questions and the difficulty level of successive question varies depending on your performace one the previous one. For instance, if you answered the first question correctly, the next question will be slightly tougher. On the other hand, if you got the first one wrong, the computer scales down your level and throws a relatively simpler question to see if you can crack it. Head spinning - No - I think it is so cool. And an important thing is you cannot bookmark a question and come back to it later, you have to answer the question on the screen before you can move on to the next.
I am not going to go into the structure of the exam, as you can find it from the ETS website. Moreover, I am not even sure if the format is still the same. But am going to tell you few important things which I will come handy when you take the exam yourself. I will also tell you what to do and what not to do. Please please give it some thought even if you do not want to follow exactly what I say. I know things that worked for me may not suit your style, but it will not hurt to have few ammos on your sleeve.
How I did it?
Please book your dates well in advance. I booked my exam date in May and I took the exam in August. It is very crowded out there, so have two more choices so that you can select any one if one is not available. Also those in college, make sure you book a date when you do not have other exams, for GRE is stressful enough, why make it more stressful? The next thing I did was to work with the book Word Power Made Easy by Norman Lewis. I do not mind repeating this, but it was one book that made me fall in love with the language. Ofcourse you do not have to go that extreme, but it sure does make things easier when you have to soak up about 3500 words, and makes it pretty interesting to learn new words. I finished this book within few weeks and then started cramming the word list. Sure it is boring, but then it is very very useful. You can make flashcards and review them often or play with your mates like I did. This is more useful because you are bound to remember words which you discuss with others. In the mean time start brushing up your 10th std Math. The Quant section should be a breeze for us brainy Indians. So that is how my prep went. Word List everyday with few Math thrown in to add spice to my day! Make sure you revise your word list atleast once, yes buddy, I mean A-Z, every single word. Or if you are struggling for time, make sure you know atleast the big ones, like A, C, E I, P, R, S, T by heart, which means you should be able to spit out the meaning, antonym and anything you know about the word, even if some one wakes you up at 3 a.m. Sounds like cliche, but well sadly that is the kind of preparation needed. Oh yeah, the toughest part in Verbal section is Reading Comprehension. It is difficult because the passages are obscure, dead boring, will put you to sleep, and will make you hate English. So I suggest strongly that you read the Editorial section of good newspapers like The Hindu, The Indian Express or any paper that you can lay your hands on. I religiously pored over the Editorial in The Hindu literally everyday and trust me, you will begin to see most of the words in Barrons and you will have proof that people after all do use these 'Big' words....
After laying the groundwork, I started giving the mock exams. Give as many as you can. It will be terribly boring, but that is the only chance you have got. Practice, practice and practice. Do exams from The Big Book, exams from Kaplan (the toughest of the lot), Cambridge, Princeton, Barrons or any exam. Make sure you do these exams on the computer, as this will give you reading practice, that is reading from the computer. The fianl 10-14 days leading up to the exam should be dedicated towards exams and yeah just keep revising the word list. You must be wondering why I have not talked about the Analytical Writing Section yet. To be honest I just kept putting it off, so one day, the day before the exam, I finally realized that I had done nothing about it. Phew ! All I did was to go through Arco's Essay book, the day before the exam, It did not take me much time to go through it, and by lunch time, I had written two essays, one each for Issue and Argument. That was all I did as far as the essays were concerned. And when I received my official score sheet I was totally surprised because I had gotten 5.5, whereas people I thought were better in English than me, scored 4-4.5, some got 5. So trust me, do not get worked up over the essays, they are the easiest. However, do not put it off untill the last moment and I assure you go through the Essay book atleast once and practice writing. Oh yeah make sure you use the writing software that comes with Powerprep and do not use MS Word or note pad, because the facilities in the GRE software are limited. I have a .pdf file of the essay book and in case you need it just e-mail, I will be more than happy to send it to you.
So here are some tips and suggestions:
1) Pace yourself, spend more time on the initial questions. Make sure you get the first few right, say the first 5-6 questions, but definitely the first 3. It worked against me as I got my second question wrong in the Quant section and I could not improve my score beyond 750. Believe me it is very easy to get 800 in Quant.
2) Answer all the questions. Never, never, never leave even one question unanswered. I had 5 min to answer the last 8 questions in Verbal section and I did not know this secret at that time, but still started clicking feverishly till I answered all the questions. Ofcourse, I got only 580, but my classmate who is zillion times better in English than me got only 530 because she left about 5 or 6 questions unanswered.
3) If you are stuck with one question and you think you have done everything, but still not sure of the correct answer, try to eliminate as many choices as possible, then make an educated guess and move on. This is not the time to prove the computer that you can crack a very tough one, just guess and move on. Infact if it is a tough question then you have probably done well enough to earn it, so give yourself a pat and move on. However, this is not always true, and dont try to play guessing games.
4) Decide on the universities you are applying to. Yeah the time to do research on uni's is before GRE and not after it. You save hundreds of dollars, if you are applying to say minimum of 8 unis. The ETS reports your score for free of cost, to 5 unis that you mention while taking the test. So for the remaining unis you have to pay $25 to ETS for each uni, that you want to apply to.
5) Do not take any exam on the day before the exam. It could be demoralizing if you get bad score and give you false hopes if you get too good a score. However, the Powerprep is fairly an accurate estimate and your actual score will about 50 points more or less than what you get in Powerprep. Just relax on the eve of the exam. But if you feel upto it, then go through the word list or do some math, topics that are difficult for you. But do not try to learn anything new and I stress it do not give mock exams on this day.
6) Cover yourself in layers on the day of the exam and this point cannot be stressed more. For if you are not comfortable in the room, then the chances are good that it will affect your score badly and you wil not want to repent it later.
7) Ofcourse, this is not the day to practice the Indian Standard Time business. Please be in the exam centre atleast 30 min before the scheduled start time of your test. The process takes fair amount of time and the last thing you want is to get panicky. If you are not sure about the location of the centre, try visiting it atleast once before your exam day, even if you think you know the city very well. You don't want surprises in this front.
8) Take some snacks and water with you. Make use of the break time and take a bite or two. Stretch yourself.
9) Please be aware that the money you pay ETS is mostly used for research purposes. That is the precise reason why you have to answer an additional section, called the Experimental section, however, you will not know which is the experimental and which is the actual one, nor will you know whether you will get Verbal or Quant as experimental one. For instance, I got two Quant sections and one Verbal, one Quant was terribly easy, the other Quant was very tough. To this day I have no idea which was experimental, but I assume the easy one was experimental. Do not try to second the guess the computer and waste your time on this. Just answer whatever question it throws at you, earnestly.
10) Memorize the directions for all the question types. Even one second that you use to see the directions once the exam starts will be counted against you.
11) Finally, few thoughts on AWA. For Issue, write down pros and cons for the given topic. Then start typing madly, and write few sentences on each point. Two or three should be more than enough. Once you have written about 3 paragraphs (One para for each point), then compose the final para. Then only write the introduction. There is a reason for this, because your essay could evolve as you write, so that way you will not waste time changing the intro, and you use that time to edit your essay. For Argument, try to notice atleast three flaws. The essay topics are so structured that there are atleast 3 flaws that you can identify easily. Write them down and then compose three paras, one for each point. Then compose the concluding para and finally the intro para. However, the intro for Argument is fairly routine and you can even decide on the intro para even before your exam. Still I felt it made sense to compose it at the end. Make sure that all paras are fairly equal in length and it is enough if you write two are three sentences for each para.
Finally, this has gone long, very long than I intended. But if you took something useful out of it, then am very glad. I have lots and lots of Cd's with me, with tonnes of material and loads of practice exams. So if you want them just write to me. I will be very glad to send them to you. I do not want to charge anything for these, because I myself got them from many sources. I even had to pay Rs300/- for two cd's that I bought from some one in geocities. Howver, I do not intend to make money out of this, I just want people to do well in their exams. However, I will charge you for Cd's and postage. But if you are in Chennai, and if you can bring your own cd's then you can drop in and get the stuff burned. If you want the cd's please write to me at cooldudesanky@gmail.com.
All the best for your exams!
1 comment:
well written article on GRE. eye-opener for many aspirants who wish to hear from the GRE experts like you.
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