I plan on taking the GRE sometime in the near future. Although some people debate the necessity of studying for this test, I do plan on studying. My question for the Dopers is, how should I go about this? I already bought a book, but I’ve barely cracked it open. Has anyone taken GRE study classes? Are they a good investment? Did you see a significant improvement in your scores? Which are the best study guides? How soon should I take the GRE? (I’m a junior.) Also, I’m thinking about taking the psychology and/or sociology GRE. Is this necessary/beneficial in gaining admission to graduate school for a M.S.W. (masters in social work)?
Thanks in advance,
Mala
Get Blindingly drunk the night before.
I’m serious.
Use the book. If it isn’t working for you, take a Kaplan, Princeton Review or a similar course. I used a Kaplan book to bring my math score up by 70 points. Just make sure you study as much as you can, because you won’t want to pay $115 to take it all over again.
I guess it depends on what kind of grad program you are planning to enter as to when you take the GRE. Different schools have different due dates. I’m applying to vet school, and they want my scores by October. I took the test once in May and once in July. It’s probably a good idea to leave yourself a little cushion of time in case you do need to take it again to raise your scores.
I don’t know much about the subject tests, so I’ll let someone else come along and answer that question.
Good luck!
From what I remember the GRE was just like the SAT… I mean exactly like the SAT… the regular GRE that is… in fact I wish I had a chance to take it at the same time as the SAT… I bet I would have made a better score… So my advice is to study just like you would for the SAT… advanced algebra… advanced english… The thing is in college, the courses you take are not exactly those that will prepare you for the GRE unless you’re a Math/English double major or something. If you have to take add on tests for the major you’re studying for, study less for that than the math/engilsh since your major will still be in your head and the misc bullshit from the core stuff will not be.
I went to the GRE website (www.gre.org) and downloaded their free prep stuff. I did most of the short quesitons and got a 1480. Kaplan prep did help me on the SAT, so maybe it would’ve on this test [I’m not going to grad school, so I sure as hell wasn’t going to do that… in fact, I only got signed up for the test about 10 days before I took it]. But the website stuff was a good start.
It’s worth working through your book. If nothing else, you want to get a familiarity with the styles of the questions, and work out whatever little tricks help you. Chances are it’s been a while since someone asked you to do an analogy, or anything along those lines.
I used a CD-ROM training/practice thing, IIRC Princeton Review brand. I did this back in 1996 when paper tests were still an option. (Are they still? Not sure whether they’ve gone over to mandatory interactive-difficulty computer tests.)
I found that the practice and strategies taught on the CD-ROM definitely improved my logic scores, by about 100 points, and study helped me remember the math I’d been furiously repressing since high school. I may have learned one or two words from the vocab practice, but vocab has always come easily to me and it wasn’t much of an issue.
Mr emilyforce took the GRE once before he started his Master’s in linguistics program at Cornell, and then again mid-progam, to see if he could up his scores before applying to PhD programs. He used both my CD-ROM and a workbook to practice for the second one, and hadn’t practiced or prepared in any way for the first test. Despite the fact that he was in a prestigious program that required daily use of math and logic skills, his scores WENT DOWN (slightly) the second time.
So, bottom line, it seems that once you learn the “strategies” for doing well – that is, you understand how the test works – and you’ve brushed up on your math and practiced the logic a little, extra work after that may or may not actually affect your scores.
Go through the book (and CD-ROM, if possible). It gives you an idea of what the test is like, and give you some tips on how to solve some problems. I took the GRE last month, and practiced with the Kaplan CD for a couple of days before the actual test.
Oh, and another thing… the computer based test takes on account how good you do. The more correct answers you get, the harder the next problems are going to be. The more difficult the problem, the more it counts toward your total score.
I found that doing the sample tests from a book of sample tests prepared me extremely well. Perhaps too well; I got 780s and 790s in all four, and didn’t get accepted to grad school (my GPA was 3.98). At least one professor interviewing me said that my GREs were higher than his, and it came out a bit sourly, so really high scores may actually be a bit of a put-off. If I could target, I’d shoot for the 700-750 mark.
With respect to the subject matter GRE (mine was in Psych), I took a freshman intro textbook and read it about five times in a row, so that I knew the material in it quite well. That might not work for the non-fuzzy subjects such as the sciences or math, but I suspect it’s a good strategy for any of the others. In any case, it worked for me. Again, possibly too well…