GRE vs SAT?

[GRE_Kickboxer]

Hi Pupil, my friend. I would be dishonest if I stated that everyone has the same ability level and can score over 700 in verbal and quant. It's not true, unfortunately. (Don't worry, there is a lot of good news too.)

Given a short period of time, I do think all of us have limits. The closer we get to it, the harder it is to budge (in the short run). We then have to be patient until we have another sudden and surprising improvement.

I think the best comparison is the bench press. Think of IQ tests and the GRE in the same way. Some people are naturally good at the bench press without ever having lifted a weight in their life. There are people out there that have never touched a weight that can bench press 350 lbs.

Some people are skinny and weak, but if they start practicing the bench press, they have a weird genetic response and can get good at it surprisingly fast even though they stink at first. These apparent wimps actually have a lot more potential than they are initially given credit for. Think of a person that scores 900 on the SAT the first time out, but somehow manages to get 1450 with 2 months of practice.




Then there are some people that are skinny and weak, and even with dedicated practice at the bench press, proper diet, sleeping well, avoiding alcohol and even getting a little help from steroids, they still suck at the bench press. Think of Mr. Puniverse, for example. Think of a person that scores 900 on the SAT and after 6 months of study scores 890.

The probability that you personally are in the last category is VERY LOW. Don't worry! In fact, I am pretty positive you aren't.

Let's complicate this further by remembering that people change as they age. A person may actually become MUCH smarter as they age or MUCH dumber (although a lot of people don't change much). Everyone is different. It depends on environment, learning disabilities, temperament and personality.

Now for the bottom line:

You are insightful, witty and intelligent and many of your posts show that. My personal feeling is that if you are hitting a "wall" it probably has to do with "working memory" limitations and the fact that you are not forcing the test to adapt to your personality and natural thinking styles. This may be affecting how easily you can handle reading comprehension passages and/or how easily you can solve complex math problems.

To overcome this obstacle you need to do a few simple things:

1) Figure out ways to simplify information so you don't have to keep as much in your mind at the same time. Get sneaky and creative. From what I've seen, I think you are a very creative thinker. Creative thinkers like us aren't always the best at GRE types of tests unless we find a way to adapt.

2) Go through problems and see how others solve them and then imagine ways that you could solve them that make sense to you. Perhaps the traditional methods don't fit your creative thinking style. They certainly don't work for me. I HATE ALGEBRA! It kills me and makes me screw up everything. I figured out sneaky ways of eliminating answers and outsmarting the test-makers. I decided that I like certain common sense logical approaches.

3) Be extremely neat with scratch paper. Learn ways to denote information cleverly. Be concise.

4) Know what you MUST know. Use your creativity to figure out what you absolutely must know to score high. I figured this out by being creative. I realized that I had to know all the squares from 2^2...16^2. I learned the common mistakes people make in quant comparisons (0's negatives etc.) Know what kind of geometry rules you need to know that make strategies easy. Know the proper triangle configurations, formulas, common types of triangles, what types of spatial reasoning facts you need to know etc. Figure it out.

5) Keep doing mental math and reading comprehension. Practice brain builder exercises and improve your ability to manipulate info in your head without losing bits of info. VERY IMPORTANT.

Know yourself. You have to force the GRE to fit your brain style. I did and it worked. I'm somebody that should excel in creative writing and stuff like that, not quantitative problem solving. How then, did I get an 800 without even being calm?

GRE_Kickboxer

[GRE_Kickboxer]

DWarrior: With 2 years, and a prior performance on the SAT that high, I'm sure you will get over 1500!!

[sanjay21]

I got 1370/1600 in my SAT and 1530 in GRE!
I think the increase in score is due to the fact that I concentrated more on verbal strategies in balance with vocab learning for the GRE

[Jeanette]

I scored almost 300 points higher on GRE than on SAT!

My SAT scores: 640 V, 620 Q
My GRE scores: 800 V, 750 Q

I was quite young when I took the SAT and did very little prep. I'm 20 years older now, my vocabulary has grown and so has my ability to focus.