Anyone take the CS GRE on April 12, 2008?

[Antony1]

If so, what did you think of it?

[extempore]

I took it. I am happy to say that it was way easier than I had anticipated, and I aced it. I'll be astonished if my raw score is below 55, and I think there's a good chance it'll be around 65.

I graduated with a CS degree in 1996 so I was quite rusty on the fundamentals. I spent about three weeks preparing for the test, studying hard for 4-6 hours per day. I had formed the impression that the official practice test lulled people into a false sense of security, so I prepared very thoroughly (at least as thorough as one can be in three weeks.) As it turned out, the 4/12/08 test was in my opinion substantially easier than the practice test, and much easier than most of the exercises I did.

That's not to say I'm sorry I overprepared - of course I'm not. Anyone who doesn't like CS enough to overprepare for the GRE probably shouldn't be going to grad school. But if you're sweating the test like I was, be advised that, this once at least, the difficulty of the practice test reflected that of the real one.

[rachid]

hey! I took it too! I have no idea about the previous tests other than those two I found in the yahoo group! but I hope I did fine! not excellent but fine!

I prepared for about four weeks around three to four hours per day! I'm still preparing a computer science degree. I'm hoping for only around a 55% or 60% as long as I haven't done any silly mistakes! as I've been doing a lot of them when I was preparing.

Do you guys know when are we expected to get the results by phone or something? I took the test in Istanbul, turkey! we were VERY few (only three)!! what about you?

[CalmLogic]

Originally Posted by rachid

Do you guys know when are we expected to get the results by phone or something?

They seem to always provide the phone results on the Saturday before the estimated date for phone results. In this case, their estimate date is May 14th (a Wednesday), so the phone results should be available sometime Saturday morning, May 10th. Make sure you have a credit card handy

(For the score reports by mail, they estimate they will mail them out on May 23rd. Based on my previous experience, my estimate is they will mail them out on May 16th, but, as you know, airmail can take a long time. Those in the U.S. may receive their scores by mail no earlier than May 19th .)

Originally Posted by extempore

Anyone who doesn't like CS enough to overprepare for the GRE probably shouldn't be going to grad school.

An excellent point. (According to psychologists, overlearning is the ideal way to learn.)

[rachid]

Thank you CalmLogic !!!