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GRE Advice: T- 4 Weeks
Akilae729
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So I'm scheduled to take the GRE on June 24th.
Kind of freaking out because I only gave myself a month to study.........
Any Advice?
Relevant Info:
I need to get >700 on the Math Section. My verbal score doesn't matter.
I've already ordered about $60 in GRE Math Study Material and I plan to spend the next month letting GRE Math rule my life. (Got the KAPLAN book with the DVD, the Math Workbook, and Some other math thing)
I'm one class away from a Masters in Aerospace Engineering and just pulled an A- in advanced engineering math. When it comes to math I'm no slouch. But according to my department's admissions person, this doesn't mean anything because GRE test math is stuff that I did back in high school and undoubtedly forget. I did geometry as a high school freshman.....
Kind of freaking out because I only gave myself a month to study.........
Any Advice?
Relevant Info:
I need to get >700 on the Math Section. My verbal score doesn't matter.
I've already ordered about $60 in GRE Math Study Material and I plan to spend the next month letting GRE Math rule my life. (Got the KAPLAN book with the DVD, the Math Workbook, and Some other math thing)
I'm one class away from a Masters in Aerospace Engineering and just pulled an A- in advanced engineering math. When it comes to math I'm no slouch. But according to my department's admissions person, this doesn't mean anything because GRE test math is stuff that I did back in high school and undoubtedly forget. I did geometry as a high school freshman.....
Akilae729 on
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The GRE is general purpose and as long as you go through the section from a test prep book you should do swimmingly. Just do not get freaked out if an extra math section shows up. There is always an experimental section that doesn't count on your test. I had to take two math sections, but they were equally painless.
It seems strange that you are taking this when you are already getting a Masters degree. So good luck on your next step of education.
My school offered a program where you could continue directly into the masters program from undergrad if you met certain requirements. Pretty awesome set up.
Since I'm trying to make it into the PhD program though, I have to take the GRE. I've got everything lined up, GPA, research funding, 4+ years of research experience, by August I'll have presented at 3 conferences and I'll have submitted my first journal article.
I just gotta jump through the GRE hoop.
If you intend to take the test digitally, prepare to be alone, in a cubicle, on closed-circuit camera, most likely with headphones on. My experience with the test began with a girl being ejected for a minor infraction. It can be an oppressive environment to say the least. My advice is to avoid allowing all of your preparation to occur under pristine, tranquil conditions. See how well you do with practice materials under a strict time limit and, if you're so inclined, against an audience.
That's about as high of a level as you can expect.
Pay attention to exponent rules and logarithms. That's what everyone forgets when they haven't been using them very frequently.
I can't remember if Trig is fair game, but that's another thing that fades fast.
Don't sweat it. This is a test with math designed for ENGLISH MAJORS. You can most definitely do this.
Read the test prep book, do some practice problems, try not to freak out. The stuff I had to study hardest was geometry, and even that was no big deal. You can probably solve most of the problems you're going to see in your head; feel free to do that, but make sure you solve it too.
If anything, I'd wager you're more at risk of getting overconfident when you see how easy the material is.
Yeah, I got a perfect score on the Math section, and I have a BA and an MA in English. Oh, also, way to be a stereotyping silly goose for thinking all English majors are bad at math.
Not really.
Anyway, as a fellow aerospace masters student I'm telling you not to sweat it, at all. Go over the test prep and you'll get a 700+ easily. And really.. by the sounds of what you've accomplished so far, the GRE is most likely just a formality at this point.
I was trying to make him feel better, boost his confidence. But I probably should have said Liberal Arts major instead, since they're the ones we engineers make fun of taking breaks from doing problem sets.
EDIT: I should add, not all Liberal Arts majors are dumb or anything. But we need something to grab hold of 4 hours into an 8 hour homework assignment.
A few general tips:
1) Most standardized tests are about how quickly you can answer the questions, not how much knowledge you have. The GRE is no exception. Given infinite time you could probably ace the test no sweat, but the time constraint can add a layer of stress and force mistakes. Moreover, you can't really afford to double- and triple- check your answers, nor should you do "long form" computations when there are shortcuts available. (For example, you shouldn't be using SIN/COS/TAN to calculate a triangle's angles when the the 45/45/90 or 30/60/90 shortcut will do the trick.) Learn the shortcuts -- any GRE book worth its salt will have all the ones you need -- and be sure to time yourself while doing practice questions/sections/tests so that you can get a feel for how much time you have on each question.
2) If you're taking the computerized test (and you probably are), be aware that you CANNOT go back and check your answers. Once you submit an answer, you can't take it back; the test accesses your ability on the fly and uses it to generate following questions. So for example, if you're getting all the early answers right, the test will automatically ramp up the difficulty and start giving you "Score level 600" and "Score level 700" questions. But if you're missing a lot of early questions, the test will serve you easier "Score level 500" questions. So there's a few points to be taken here:
-- The first 10 or so questions are the MOST IMPORTANT. If you're guessing on any of these questions, you're doing it wrong. If you speed through them too quickly, you're doing it wrong. Take a little more time here and make ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that you're submitting the right answers, because these questions really affect how the rest of the test plays out and what score you can get.
-- Learn how to guess well, because you can't skip a question and come back later. If a question has you stumped and is eating away your time, narrow it down to two or three possible answers, pick one, and keep going.
-- Don't try to use the later questions' difficulty to access how you're doing. Thinking "Oh no, question 20 was too easy, I must have gotten the wrong answers on some of the early questions!" is bad -- it's very likely that the question is just easy to you because, well, the Math GRE is a pretty easy test. You'll cause yourself undue stress if you try to figure out if your later questions should be considered "easy" or not, and like I said earlier, stress forces errors.
3) There is NO PENALTY for a wrong answer in the computerized GRE; in fact, to add insult to injury, you lose points for any incomplete questions! So if you've only got a minute to spare and one or two questions left, just spam answers because you're better off doing that than leaving anything unanswered.
4) Don't cancel your scores unless you think you REALLY fucked up. As in, "I had to Christmas tree the answers for the last 8 questions" fucked up. Test-takers are notoriously pessimistic about their scores and often receive way better scores than they expect they will.
I just gotta ramp up my confidence in taking the test. I had some issues this semester where my "advisor" left for another job and I did relatively poorly in a class. Really wracked my academic confidence.
Time to nut up.
*And I was really angry about it, because as soon as I hit the button I knew it was the wrong answer, but I couldn't go back and fix it (sigh)
This is true. My verbal percentile was higher than my math percentile and I had 640 verbal and 790 math... Most of the PhD programs I applied to had a median math score of 800.
Though top grad programs don't really care about your scores, as long as you can pass some minimum threshold you're probably good enough. I have a disability that makes it difficult for me to write, ETS refused to give me accommodation, and I ended up in the bottom 20-30% for writing and no one cared.
This website is AMAZING for brushing up. I am starting calc in a week after not having taken a math class in about 13 years (oh and failing math almost every semester I've taken it except the one time I squeaked by with a C). I feel more confident with my math skills now then I ever have.
But also to echo what everyone else said, even back when I absolutely sucked at Math I still managed to get a 570 on it on the GRE, so I doubt you need to be as nervous as you seem to be.
I'm a CS duder that took the GRE a handful of years ago, and I got caught by the math portion with my pants down, so to speak (I still got a perfect score actually, but , well you'll see).
I hadn't seen geometry for 4 years when I took that test, and it had been even longer for straight up trig. Guess what came up a lot on the math test? Thank Christ for calculus and my ability to derive the formula for the area of a sphere.
So, that's the big risk with the math portion in my opinion. You may know way more advanced math that they aren't going to ask you about (like linear algebra or discrete math) and get totally blindsided by the simple things they do ask. Seriously, who the hell does algebra by hand by the end of college? That's what a symbolic solver is for.
If you happen to use a non-standard keyboarding setup (like say dvorak), be aware that you'll be stuck in qwerty-land for the duration of the test in most settings, since the tests were all pretty much computerized when I took them a few years back.