Hi, been lurking in these forums for a month now so here's my GRE experience. I am a native English speaker but had never fully invested time into much of the English language for that matter until I started studying for GREs heh
. CS/Math Double major (790 puts me to shame ;( )
Quant:
Much harder than power prep in my opinion. Very little actual math, just a lot of math principles tested and construed into strange problems. Personally, the 790 was a surprised as I had to "guess" on maybe 4-5 questions later on after the 10th question to keep up with the time.
Verbal:
Same level of difficulty and format as power prep (very good indicator).
Got an early long RC, which hurt me on time.
Experimental last:
A much easier verbal but not realizable until the end.
Overall impression:
Definitely ran into some time troubles for both sections. An early long RC
increased the pressure for the remainder of the exam. Needed a bit more preparation for quant to have gotten that 800. RC was difficult but only due to the type of RCs (content wise) presented.
Actual Preparation:
1.5 months total:
Verbal:
*Barron's 3500 words (1 month, basically needed to rote about 1/2 of the words here)
*Barron+Kaplan+arco+princeton+nova frequency words list (700+words)
*GRE Bible reiterated the Barron Words pretty well
*Big Book: The 27 exams here were a bit harder and used more of an antiquated style of language than power prep, (add all unknown words to your word list)
*Random words picked up over forum discussions, daily discourse, the newspaper, ect
*Read the New Yorker: I wished I had done this years earlier as it would have considerably helped the RC as well as improved my general knowledge.
Eventually I had about 4-5 vocab lists of 400 words each floating around so I merged them and spent the time every few days to reiterate them. Also, I want to stress the need of using dictionaries for precise diction/2ndary defs (webster, encyclopedia britanica online, dictionary.com works fine). I grouped 1/2 my words based on similar definitions for review, but I would recommend against it as some of the questions are more prone to test you on the shades/degrees of meaning rather than the general definitions (this is not a subsitute for actually learning the words!)
Quant:
*Barron quant review/practice tests, pp, a bit of nova, and this forum!
Awa:
I wrote about 3 issue and 4 argument essays under timed conditions for practice. I suggest that people start a blog or post a lot of "discussion" in different forums to become better writers.
Practice test comparisons:
(1.5 months ago)
PP1: 590 v, 790 quant
PP2: 610 v, 780 quant
I unfortunately burned both tests early on
Over time:
Big Book: ranged from 620 to 750 verbal, no quant
GRE Bible: ranged from 600 to 800, Note that GRE bible inflates score too much (4 wrong ~=800), quant range from 760 - 790
Nova: verbal ~720, Quant 800
2 days before the exam:
PP1: 790 v (due to seeing the same questions appear on this forum and in GREbible) , 800 quant
PP2: 720 v (saw/remembered fewer questions ) , 790 quant
Final comments:
For engineers, sciences, maths majors: know that 780 quant is a cutoff needed to be semi-competitive for a good program (top 15). Verbal cutoffs are weighed much less; 610+ for the top 10 maybe). But remember that GRE scores are merely cutoffs (maybe for the 1st and 2nd rounds of the admission/slashing process) for admissions and perhaps for better chances of getting funding and aid afterwards for phd applicants. Know that after the GRE and GPA cutoffs, the rest of your package becomes much more of a determinant factor (Actual research done (publish, conference, etc),
SOP/compatibility of research interests with the program,
LOR). This is based on my experience with the US education process and through vicarious accounts of the graduate admission process.
Final final Comment: To get over 700 in verbal, it seems that "roting" words just isn't enough. One regret I have is that I didn't adequately practice RC enough. I was never an avid reader to begin which should of raised flags but it didn't. Fortunately, I didn't see any words that I didn't know already on the actual exam which is a good indicator that the "mass" vocab review approach had worked. However, the RCs pretty much determine the your final scores after a certain point beyond vocab knowledge. I think this was mentioned before on this forum, Barron+other vocab will get you to 650-660, anything above that due to reading skillz.
Well, best of luck to everyone else