Yeah, having memorized a false set of antonyms for the test is pretty much guaranteed not to help a person’s engineering career. But the GRE is the same for everyone, and in theory, I imagine it’s meant to test a broadish range of knowledge. What’s wrong with being a reasonably well-rounded person?
What the GRE does is often use obscure definitions of otherwise easy words. For example, I never knew that vapid can mean, literally, flat. I don’t remember if the antonym was ebullient or another word that mean, by some definition, ‘bubbly’, but that was how it worked out.
I rarely if ever saw words I didn’t know. However, with the GRE, that does not necessarily correlate to getting the right answer, IMHO.
What I REALLY hated about the GRE was the analytical essay section. I’m a historian, I write essays all the time. The crucial difference - I write essays with an actual TOPIC.
Not to pile on, but I believe we have found the problem. 
Going beyond my own profession, what is it about (insert major or profession here) that makes its practioners instantly dismissive of (insert another major or profession that uses a different skill set)? Especially when they are going for a postgraduate degree? A masters or doctorate in (first profession) will open one up to greater job responsibilities but to be an effective manager you will have to use (skill from second profession) more often than you would as a lowly cubicle dweller. An engineering manager needs to be able to write and an English professor needs to know some math.
Generalize, people! “University” and “universal” have a common root for a reason!
I hope that no one thought that I was trying to say that English skills are not important for an engineer. Nothing could be further from the truth. My point was that since Stinkpalm would be competing against other engineers he wouldn’t have to worry as much about a mediocre score.
Haj
No, I thought Stinkpalm was trying to say that English skills are not important for an engineer. A common misconception shared by the ones I have known, worked with, and not hired.
Having a broadish range of knowledge and being well rounded is desirable, and I never did say that they should completely chuck the verbal section for applicants to advanced engineering programs. But there are other verbal skills that are more important, not only to aspiring engineers, but to anyone headed for graduate school. But I’d drop the antonyms and synonyms and maybe expand the reading comp subsection.
As another who did rather well on the GRE (90+ percentile on verbal, I don’t remember my actual score), I agree that the verbal portion is a terribly designed test. Many people have mentioned eliminating words based on common roots, suffxes, etc. But that doesn’t work on the GRE because they aren’t there!
On the SAT, there are a lot of latin and greek roots and many opportunities to use general knowledge of language. On the GRE, a vast majority of the words chosen don’t have any obviously evident roots. You either know the word, or you don’t.
By the way, make sure you know “polemic,” which was on both of my practice tests and on my actual test. And, yes, it does have a greek root, but not a particularly helpful one.
Update for everyone. I took the test today and (IMHO) killed the fucker.
I got a 710 quantitative and a 610 verbal! WOOT!!
My strategy for verbal was to spend very little time on the antonym / synonym questions and focus on the reading comp and sentence completion ones. Basically on the BIG WORD questions I either knew them or I didn’t. I didn’t waste time trying to “figure out” words that I didn’t have a clue on. The reading comp and sentence completion had everything I needed to figure out the correct answer and didn’t require alot of BIG WORD knowledge.
FTR, the words on the GRE didn’t use many recognizable roots or anything. It was fucked.
Also, I realise that to the people of the SDMB that EBULLIENCE may be more commonly used around here than in daily life. It was just an example.
Thanks to this thread if my professor says that it takes 4200 Joules to bring something to an ebullient temperature I will know what the hell he is talking about.
You know, oddly enough, the Latin and Greek roots didn’t really help me either. This is odd because I can read Latin and am also learning Greek. Although I must admit I did know that a polemarch was a Greek general.
Those are fantastic scores, Stinkpalm! Congrats!
The GRE was just a massive pain in the ass. It takes a long time, the scheduling sucks, and you have to squeeze it in at the end of college when you’re getting your ass kicked by senior projects. On top of which, the English section seemed to have been made intentionally obtuse, which is just stupid unless you’re going for a PhD in vocabulary.
I pulled an 800 on the SAT verbal. No, really, I did on the third try, mom was an English teacher and I had to or else I didn’t love her. But I only made the top 10% on the GRE verbal sections. Not that it mattered, since I was an engineer and nobody even looked at that score. And of course then the math scores didn’t impress, since nothing on there is indicative of what you should know after two and a half years of calculus and diff eqs. So the whole thing was just a waste of time I needed for other projects.
Well done, Stinkpalm.
Just for the record, from The Penguin Guide to Synonyms And Related Words {1996 edition}: “Elated and ebullient both refer, like light-hearted, to a welling-up of high spirits. Elated, however, can often refer to a response to some external occurrence or news, whereas ebullient suggests the same spontenaity as light-hearted. Ebullient stems from the root of a Latin word meaning boil out, and the English word reflects this in pointing to a bubbling over with enthusiasm, excitement or exuberance: fans who were elated when the team scored another goal; an ebullient personality that always seemed to overflow with vivacity and zest.”
Synonyms: blithe, convivial, elated, genial, jovial, light-hearted
Antonyms: dismal, gloomy, ill-humoured, melancholic, morose {Ha!}, sad, sullen, tranquil
No mention of vapid, which I do agree is stretching it, so I guess Ha! for you too.
Well, I must be living a sheltered life. I have never once seen the word ebullience in print before this thread, nor heard it uttered in a film or play. I have certainly never heard it used in conversation. Surprising, since I am very familiar with all it’s synonyms. Even sprightliness!
Go figure.
I took the GRE this morning. I have already graduated, though. The verbal section is nothing special. Just study some friggin’ word lists, weenie.
That was meant lightheartedly. Good scores. It’s late.
It’s a perfectly cromulent word.
As was the math (when I took it, the SAT had trig and the GRE only up to second year high school algebra) - it was funny, you were expected to know less coming out of college than going in.
Yay, Stinkpalm!
Count me in amongst those who found the SAT verbal mysteriously more difficult (relative to my knowledge at the time) than the GRE verbal. When I was in high school, I really studied up on the SAT, figuring that it’s not just the words themselves you need to know, but also the kinds of questions the tests asks. After putting in all that time and effort, and taking the test twice, the best I could do was a 700 verbal score, which was pretty good, but frankly I was hoping for a lot better.
Flash forward a few years; I’m applying to grad schools. My test prep strategy is to focus on my GRE subject test and review the old math and “logic” skills for those sections on the GRE general test, and completely eschew verbal prep altogether. I really sucked at the analytical section, and even after practicing those skills (which basically doubled my first practice scores), I was still dicey at the analytical stuff. The math came back to me rather easily. I take the GRE once, and it’s enough: 800 verbal! 760 math! and a rather mediocre score in analytical, but who cares? The grad schools didn’t…
The verbal test; it’s a Zen thing.
I did really well on the verbal portion when I took it, and I’m still going to check in as thinking it’s absolute bullshit. I did ten points better on the quantitative section, and that would never, ever have happened if the difficulty levels were anywhere near consistent with each other–I read constantly and have a pretty damn good vocabulary (even if I don’t use it too actively), whereas my math skills are practically nonexistent.
While I’m complaining: what is with the written section? Seriously. My writing ability is probably my strongest academic asset, but I scored in the 44th percentile. I guess I just wasn’t smart enough to realize it was all about gaming the scorers. Standardized essay tests need to die.
(Okay, I know, this is basically sour grapes. But we’re in the pit, and that’s allowed.)
Taking a few practice tests are the way to go, even if you have to pay for them. I did very well on the GRE (>700 on all three portions), but I did the best on the logic part which is no longer part of the test. Damn ETS is out to get me.
Studying word lists can only help boost your score by 10 or 20 points, by the way, unless you start early. Even if you learn 10 new words a day for three weeks, chances are that only one or two will be on the test. Most of the questions actually require you to know several words, anyway, by the way they are written. They do tend to recycle words, so when you take practice tests, be sure they are actually GRE’s from the last 10 years.