1500: 730v 770q

[yoondaddy]

Well this was my second time taking the GRE and it was worth it. The first time i ended up with a 1430: 640v and 790q. Looking to go into religious studies PH.D programs a good verbal is a must. Here goes the debrief:

I scheduled my exam for 12pm as anything earlier my brain is not functioning fully. So one word of advice is figure out what time of day you score the best and schedule your test at that time. For me, it was early afternoon. The awa issue essay was rough. Both topics were not interesting to me and seemed a bit obscure. Why couldnt i get something easy like specialized vs generalist. Anyways, I got my body paragraphs out but the time cut off halfway before my intro was done. I think I blew it on the issue essay. Fortunately, I think that I did well on the argument essay.

After the awa, I got quants. Definitely alot more time consuming questions than the first time I took the GRE. I probably guessed on about 4 or 5 questions just to save time. While none of the problems were too hard, I knew the time for me to figure it out would be substantial so I just guessed. It seems that quants is pretty forgiving and that you can get high 700s and miss a good bit. The last few questions seemed too easy so I thought I bombed the section, but I still ended up with a 770.

Next came the dreaded verbal. I didnt get to the reading comprehension questions until question 12 or 13. Then I got 3 reading comprehension passages back to back to back. FANTASTIC. When I finished the verbal I thought the question levels were similar to the ones when I got a 640 so I was pretty upset.

I got a research section on math and skipped it. To my suprise I got 730 on the verbal, which was what I was shooting for. I was hoping to get a 800 on quants but oh well. I'm not a CS or engineering guy.

ADVICE:
Cant really offer much for quants as I didn't really study for it. Just be careful to watch the wording of the word problems. Know your properties for triangles and circles. i.e. a 30-60-90 triangle has sides of x,xsquareroot3, and 2x. You should be fine.

During my test, I think I knew just about everysingle word on the test. I would definitely start off with the high frequency lists of barrons, kaplan, and princeton(which you can find with google) and get those down first. I'm a bit ambivalent towards memorizing all of Barrons master wordlist. I definitely didnt memorizing all of them and frankly gave up half way. However, I remember there was one word that I learned the night before the test(in was in bed and skimming through the wordlist) that ended up being an antonymn on the test. So if you have the drive and time to do Barrons do it, if not, be sure to do the high frequency and learn as much as possible. IMHO sentence completion questions are free points. Practice those until you always get them right. Look for the clues and you should get it right. Ants and analogies are definition dependent but for the analogies don't force the link between the words. Look for the strongest connection in the answer choices if you dont know the word or connection.
Lastly, for reading comprehension, read the whole passage carefully but quickly. No question, that is the best way. While you can treasure hunt some of the questions, the inference and similar type questions need an understanding of the passage. Also, the first and last sentences of the paragraph can help elucidate the idea of the passage.

[grefreak]

congrates..
when did u take your first GRE exam?

[yoondaddy]

Originally Posted by grefreak

congrates..
when did u take your first GRE exam?

September

[fly4rahul]

hi actually just wanted to know about princeton test??????
actually i gave 1 test in which got 26 right in quant and 20 right in verbal but after finishing the test saw a score of verbal 490 quant 550=1040.
my exam is on 17th nov so really disheartened with this score.
but gave pp1 some day before where gt 650 verbal and 660 quant.

[fly4rahul]

ohhhhhh sry awesome score congratts

[yoondaddy]

Originally Posted by fly4rahul

hi actually just wanted to know about princeton test??????
actually i gave 1 test in which got 26 right in quant and 20 right in verbal but after finishing the test saw a score of verbal 490 quant 550=1040.
my exam is on 17th nov so really disheartened with this score.
but gave pp1 some day before where gt 650 verbal and 660 quant.

I would only rely on PP for accurate scores. Everything else seems pretty arbitrary. I'm sure ETS has some crazy algorithm for its CATs

[rose0550]

Congrats for the great score.