I have no real evidence, but I’m convinced that crossword puzzles are a good way to practice for the verbal section of the GRE. After all, they’re all about coming up with the right synonym or antonym. The word games on sites like m-w.com might also be fun ways to brush up on your vocab.
I also strongly recommend not taking the GRE when you’re a new mother who’s awash in hormones and not getting enough sleep. But then you could probably have guessed that that would be a bad idea.
I wish I could agree with Rhytmdvl, but in 11 years I have seen students whose score didn’t improve (aside from the ones who didn’t put in any effort, of course). For example, I had a student in my last LSAT class who scored a 168 on his first practice test. He never topped that again on any other practice test (he hasn’t taken the real one yet–he’s going in October). I don’t think I had anything to share with that student that he didn’t already know.
Likewise, I had an ACT student who had already scored a 34. Why this student felt tutoring was necessary when she already had a 34 (out of 36) is a mystery to me, but a student like that is almost guaranteed to not go up.
I’ve also seen many students who did improve, but I genuinely believe would have improved without the class just by taking some practice tests. I teach almost seven days a week most weeks, so I see tons of students each year for over a decade, so I’ve seen just about every scenario I can think of.
I’ve also seen many, many students who would have been hopeless without taking a class of some kind as well.
I don’t get it. I mean, I understand why practice helped me on the math GRE, because I hadn’t done that kind of algebra and geometry in over twenty years, and I was rusty. And the logic in the analytical was good, because you need to buck up on those kind of missionary/cannibal questions, and that kind of thinking really does improve with practice.
But how do you study for SATs? I really don’t get it. Yes, a review on the algebra and geometry - I can see taking a few practice tests as a refresher. But if you don’t have the vocabulary, is a few week course going to teach it to you? Same with reading comprehension - if you haven’t gotten it in all your years of school, how is a short course going to give it to you?
As for the test-taking strategies, they take, what, five minutes to tell?
Please bear with me; I come from a pre-SAT course era. I honestly don’t understand this stuff. Maybe the tests themselves have changed.
We probably don’t actually disagree. I’d cut a bit about top end students and the difference between their few percentage points and other students’ double digit jumps. But it started wandering into the different types of students–which I’m sure you’re familiar with–so I cut out the bit of sidetrack.
But you’re right; if someone is naturally hitting the 90th percentile, the difference between classroom and self study is probably minimized. For most people, though, the difference is huge (IMHO, YMMV, ETC).
Oy!: Imagine being told that basic equations are going to be tested in three times as many questions as inequalities, or what critical elements an essay grader (no more analogies, now they have essays) is looking for. Or how about brushing up on skills that were taught in sixth grade that an eleventh grader hasn’t seen since. There are also a lot of strategies that natural (i.e., people who just do well on standardized tests) test takers intuitively use that can be learned through practice.
Our students don’t ‘study’ for the SAT as much as they ‘practice’ . It’s more about learning a skill (especially on the reading side) than it is studying facts. Sure, you can study vocabulary words to do better on the Sentence completions, but I’ve seen plenty of people with excellent vocabularies still screw up that section because of the way they were approaching the question.
All my professors (I just got my psych BA) said to us that GRE scores don’t correlate that well with success in graduate school, so those who get the highest scores are not usually the ones that do best in grad school. Usually those who score well but not super high do the best. I’m sure the studies all say something different and I don’t have a cite, however.
The GRE wasn’t really all that bad. If I was a bit better at math I wouldn’t be taking the test again, my score was not much lower than I wanted. My math score was pretty darn bad compared to average scores and my verbal not too shabby, even though I got the same score on both sections. But since I only studied intensively the week of the test, I KNOW I can do better. I’m not some damn genius and I still did pretty well without studying a lot - I’m sure any doper can do well if they try at all. I’d really study the math more and just do all the practice tests for the verbal and do some vocab studying. But you can really LEARN the math before the test, but whether or not you learn the vocab needed is a crapshoot - but it probably won’t hurt if you don’t freak out over it.
And seriously, the writing was not hard. If you can write a real college-level paper without someone editing it for you, you’re totally fine (as in, you can write a coherent paper with reasonably good sentence structure and a reader can follow along with your line of reasoning). I got a 5.5 on the essay part (out of 6) and I was really worried about my second essay not being very good. One essay was arguing the statement “technology has done more harm than good” which was ridiculously easy to argue against, and the other was a fake article with a very obvious logical fallacy in it and you had to debunk their reasoning basically.
One more thing you’ll learn when you dive into GRE books - since the exam is computer adaptive, you can’t skip over questions then go back later. The exam modifies question difficulty as you go on based on what questions you answer correctly. So that one major test-taking strategy is impossible with the GRE. Take a bit of time on the first couple questions of each section, if you answer them correctly, you will get harder questions and possible more points.
I took it two years ago at the tender age of 39. I LOVED the fact that it’s now the analytical writing has replaced the “If Bill can only get to work on days when Sondra wears a blue dress but Ginny has the flu on Thursdays and Penny has to take her daughter to the doctor on the day when Jack is not using deodorant then what is the only day when Lothar can work at the cash register without Vicki being late?” questions; I did much better.
No real advice otherwise other than the study guides and of course brush up vocabulary. They send you software, though mine didn’t arrive until 2 weeks after I took the test.
Interesting. Back when I majored in psych, one of the primary examples of cognitive dissonance was that statistically, grades and GREs correlated extremely well with performance in grad school, but that the professors themselves were all sure that their own personal judgment was superior and thus continued to pick people based on whatever. Of course, above, say, 3.75 and 700s, it probably doesn’t matter much - chances are you’re going to get a decent student.
I used to love these. Oh hell, let’s face it; I love taking this kind of test. It wasn’t a burden; I’d take SATs for a living if I could.
Haha. Those are the types of questions that send me into full panic mode. I’m happy to hear they’ve done away with them.
I took the GRE last year and did pretty well with minimal study. I used the Barrons book and software when I did study. IMO, the test is a slightly more advanced SAT (at least the SAT format of the test I took 5 years or so ago) with a writing section. I’d say if you did well on the SATs, you probably don’t need a class. Take the timed electronic practice tests and practice analyzing the prompts for the Analytical Writing section in a timely enough manner so you will have time to write the actual essays. Since you can’t really gauge how well you did on the writing sections with practice tests, I would suggest planning on taking the actual test at least twice.
Masochist.
No, it’s not painful for me. It’s, oh, like some people enjoy solving crossword puzzles. I enjoy taking SATs. Or did. I’d need a little practice now that it’s been thirteen years or so since my GREs.
I took the SATs in 1968 and 1969, and I remember that claim. Back then the College Board did not release tests, so it was difficult for anyone to have students practice on real questions. Plus, the tests were sold as a predictor of performance in college, and a good predictor should not be affected by short term studying.
I’m with you about enjoying the tests. When I looked at the LSATs, I had to restrain myself from taking them so as not to look like I was competing with my daughter. But I do logic puzzles for fun, so it was very tempting.
As for scores, I think they have renormalized it since we took the SATs, so to be comparable you’d have to add some points to our scores. I think I’d be well over 1600 now. 
Ugh. The first time I took the GRE, several years ago, I waited until that bit changed. I knew it was changing, so I was just patient until it was gone. I took a practice test on the internet and got a 400 on that section. I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure that means I got every single question wrong.
My BF-at-the-time got an 800 on that section and was completely baffled at my bafflement. It’s hard to explain to other people why that’s so hard for some people (ie, me), but it is. I think for me it’s that I’m really terrible at visualizing images. I get lost a lot because I can’t visualize street plans until I am REALLY familiar with an area, that sort of thing.
Yeah, the writing went considerably better than a logic test would have.
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Don’t you wish there were a paying job that just allowed you to take these tests? God, that would be fun! Admittedly, I only got 1540 on my SATs back in the day, but I could probably do better now with 35 more years of vocabulary under my belt.
You could have “borrowed” your daughter’s test copies, Xeroxed them, and taken them on the sly. Nobody had to know. I think that’s what I would have done in your shoes. But I don’t think they had logic tests in the SATS - or did they?
I can be counted on to get lost, even when I know where I’m going pretty well! So I don’t know that there’s a direct correlation there.
There’s a guy, Everett Kaser, out there who writes and sells logic computer games for a living; the one I have is called Sherlock. It’s a fun game. It’s easier than a logic word problem, because you can eliminate possibilities as you go along, but it’s still very much the same kind of logic. I didn’t mean this as a plug, and have no personal or financial association with this guy; I’ve just had and enjoyed this game for about twelve or thirteen years by now, and it’s pretty cheap. Plus if your disk crashes or you get a new computer, you can call or email him, he’ll look you up in his records, and let you re-download it. He has a number of other logic games as well.
What I don’t get is, if they’re all training these days for the SATs, why’d they have to scale them down. I mean, I don’t think intelligence has dropped in 30 years (although, like all adults, I’m forced to wonder from time to time :D). Has education gotten that piss poor? Interesting, since supposedly education has become far more scientifically studied that it used to be. It makes me wonder just what kind of studies they’re doing.
But I think where we went wrong is when we decided that it wasn’t the kids’ responsibilities to get an education, at almost exactly the same time when all kids, but especially the poor ones, decided that getting an education was something for wusses. Much as I’d like to blame the far right for the nation’s problems, I think that single thing will be ultimately responsible for the Fall (the Decline already having started) of the American Empire). Even the middle class parents who really want their kids well educated seem to place as much of the responsibility for that in the hands of the teachers and themselves rather than the kids. They don’t seem to realize that all these people coming from India and China with these great educations and getting the good jobs are getting very rote educations, where they are drilled, and no effort is made to keep them ‘engaged’ or to make the material ‘relevant.’ They learn the material because they’re expected to and they know they need to if they’re ever going to be anything but peasants.
Yes, yes, I know that’s supposed to stifle creativity. Problem is, after a year or two working in the US, I’ve met very few Indians or Chinese who weren’t every bit as innovative as their U.S. counterparts, and usually had a better technical grounding to boot. I don’t think kids need help in being creative in schools; they do that just fine in their play and in the music and art classes that exist for that reason. They don’t need it in discussions about facts where their feelings are discussed as much as the facts themselves (and I saw that at a college level! :eek:)
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