GRE Preperatory Class

[constrainedoptimizer]

Apologies if this has to be moved to the GRE forum, but I wanted the opinion of economists...

My alma mater (MA school) offers a class geared towards preparing one for the GRE. I am going to assume they offer this at other places with a slight chance that one of you may have even taken such a class. If any have, please list experiences/feasibility. It is 5 consecutive Saturdays, from morning 'till afternoon for approx. $300.

[econphilomath]

Personally, I think its pretty pathetic to pay $300 to prepare for the GRE given you can pick up the same advice at Barns and Noble for 20 bucks, and you already have a strong background in math which is the only REALLY important part of the GRE.


You don't need someone to tell you that icecream makes you fat just like you don't need someone to tell you how to add or substract.


I do however concide that given the stakes involved paying 300 bucks "just in case" is not that crazy.

[econphilomath]

Another though, if your carrying out contrained-optimization as your nick name suggests, i'm sure you can hand GRE math!!

[Olm]

Not necessary. Buy Baron's and use the free materials at the ETS website. Also buy the Big Book. That is enough.

[sarvonz]

Originally Posted by Olm

Not necessary. Buy Baron's and use the free materials at the ETS website. Also buy the Big Book. That is enough.

While the Big Book is good for practice, one probably just need to do a couple of the quantitative sections to get familiar with the style of the GRE. The math questions in the Big Book are just too easy. However, the verbal sections are excellent for preparation in my opinion. Do as many sections as possible, but only if you are sure you can ace the quantitative section.

I would suggest you to do one of the two mock tests in the Powerprep first to see how good you are. Of course, if you can handle Baron's, you are set to go. The materials in Baron's are harder than what's needed for one to get a 800 in my opinion.

[Karina 07]

If you want to be sure of getting a good score, then spend money on getting a couple of prep books with the computer-adaptive test. Imho, the computer-adaptive test part is really important. And if you look through those, you'll do just as well (what do you think you'd be doing in that course, anyway? Going through prep material!), plus save money. I wouldn't do the course. So many people get a good math score (what is it, 800Q = 92nd percentile or some such?), and yet only a tiny fraction of people take a prep course for it.

P.S. I agree with the post above, it was Barron's I used and they were good, I forgot the name of it but now I see others mentioned it, as well. And... I also used Peterson's, I think. I didn't like them so much because their CATs didn't work on my computer even though they were supposed to (they don't tell you to turn off anti-virus stuff before installing).

[Olm]

Originally Posted by sarvonz

While the Big Book is good for practice, one probably just need to do a couple of the quantitative sections to get familiar with the style of the GRE. The math questions in the Big Book are just too easy. However, the verbal sections are excellent for preparation in my opinion. Do as many sections as possible, but only if you are sure you can ace the quantitative section.

I would suggest you to do one of the two mock tests in the Powerprep first to see how good you are. Of course, if you can handle Baron's, you are set to go. The materials in Baron's are harder than what's needed for one to get a 800 in my opinion.

I very much disagree. The math questions in the Big Book are representative of the actual GRE questions (they are retired GRE questions), while the ones in Kaplan and such are not. I spent all my time preparing for questions that had no chance of showing up on the exam, and ended up wasting a lot of time because of it.

Of the all the test prep books, Baron's has the most accurate questions. They are a little to much harder in difficulty, but this is a good thing. At least the questions resemble what the actual GRE questions look like to some extent.

The more practice, the better. He should do both powerpreps and all the sample questions on the powerprep cd at the very least. The exam is about doing things as fast as possible. With practice, you can answer questions in under a minute compared to about 4 or 5 if you have never seen the question type before. I ran into a few questions on my exam that I could not answer because I have never seen the question type before, but had I prepared correctly, I would have known the formula and been able to solve in in a matter of seconds.

Some people study for over a year for the GRE quant (granted, at a casual pace). For the people who MUST score 800 Q, the typical amount of time to spend studying is 3 months.

[constrainedoptimizer]

Originally Posted by Olm

I very much disagree. The math questions in the Big Book are representative of the actual GRE questions (they are retired GRE questions), while the ones in Kaplan and such are not. I spent all my time preparing for questions that had no chance of showing up on the exam, and ended up wasting a lot of time because of it.

Of the all the test prep books, Baron's has the most accurate questions. They are a little to much harder in difficulty, but this is a good thing. At least the questions resemble what the actual GRE questions look like to some extent.

The more practice, the better. He should do both powerpreps and all the sample questions on the powerprep cd at the very least. The exam is about doing things as fast as possible. With practice, you can answer questions in under a minute compared to about 4 or 5 if you have never seen the question type before. I ran into a few questions on my exam that I could not answer because I have never seen the question type before, but had I prepared correctly, I would have known the formula and been able to solve in in a matter of seconds.

Some people study for over a year for the GRE quant (granted, at a casual pace). For the people who MUST score 800 Q, the typical amount of time to spend studying is 3 months.

Thanks OLM, that's some great advice there. What about taking the actual test. I know there is some sort of expiration on the test score, and I am sure you can't take the test a million times. But is there a typical strategy most follow as to the amount of times one takes this test and how frequently? (Does it look real bad if someone takes this test multiple times? If you don't get the score you wanted the first go around, and retake it a second time with a lower result, will your respective adcom take the higher score less into consideration?)

Sorry about all of the questions, but I'll be dropping apps in a year and my knowledge of the GRE is an empty-set.

[Mr.Keen]

Finally someone agrees with me about the usefulness of Barron's! All I needed was two weeks of Barron's (2006 edition actually) and PowerPrep to score 790 in quant. And I am not a math wizard by any means.

[econphilomath]

Originally Posted by Olm

For the people who MUST score 800 Q, the typical amount of time to spend studying is 3 months.

Do you have reference for that...