GRE went from bad to AWESOME

[DVMorBust]

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AAAAHHHH!

I took the GRE on Friday...and it started off completely horribly. Finished my first essay, hit 'submit', and a message pops up - "Fatal error. Please see administrator." They'd had some sort of technical issue, and I had to do the section. completely. over.

Maybe it was a good thing, though, because I wound up exceeding my goal. By a lot. I dithered at the final screen for about five minutes, trying to decide if the essay issue threw me off enough for it to matter, and finally decided I didn't want to think about the GRE anymore, so I hit 'accept'.

800 verbal, 750 quant.

Maybe the secret was the essay mixup - after rewriting an entire section, I had a complete 'screw this' mentality and wasn't nervous at all.

Of course, afterwards, I very nearly fell over while checking out and had to sit outside the center for a half hour before my legs stopped shaking enough to drive. . .but it was exactly the pick-me-up I needed to get me out of my 'I AM NOT WORTHY!' funk.

 

[rachroo]

Congrats DVMorbust! That is an awesome score!!

 

[DVMorBust]

Thanks! I was in shock for a couple days, but it's starting to sink in now.

 

[chordy4]

that's an AWESOME score...congratulations!!

 

[ckgilabert]

i hope that happens to me!!! lol. i was scheduled to take it on the 4th...but im sooo nervous and unprepared that i decided to call and make it for the 30th. which makes my stomach churn a little, but oh well.

how'd you study for the gre? and how'd you get a perfect score on the verbal??!?! good job! 🙂

 

[DVMorBust]

For the math, I got my hands on as many study guides as possible and just did questions over and over and over. You figure out pretty quickly how to recognize what 'trick' they're asking for with a given question (not specifying integers, etc.), which means you have a better head start when you get to the test and look for the right answer. You can recognize what they're asking by *how* they ask it instead of the information given.

I don't know that I can offer much advice on the verbal - I think it's the degree in Linguistics and foreign languages that saved me there, which unfortunately doesn't really help for GRE-specific studying. I did find that the Kaplan GRE verbal flashcard set had all the words that were on my test (don't know if it holds true for every test), so that might be worth looking at. I didn't use them much, just bought them the day of with a gift-card and went through them all to refresh my mind.

Also, the book I'd recommend above all others is Princeton Review's "Cracking the GRE". I think they make a few different books on the GRE, but that one seemed the best to me - laying out everything in a logical fashion, and approaching again in a method that lets you recognize what they're getting at with a specific question before you go to answer it.

Two things I did that I think helped a lot were - I didn't study at all the day before, and forced myself not to think about it. The day of, I went over only problems that I knew I could do. It helped boost my confidence a lot to be on a roll before stepping into the testing center.

Another thing to mention - when taking the actual test, it seemed like the questions were actually a lot easier than the ones in practice guides. That's probably why I spent so much time at the last screen, thinking 'if it was easy, I just screwed it all up'. Don't analyze too much while you're doing it, and do as many actual problems beforehand as you can (make sure to read the explanations of the ones you get wrong!).

I had three books - Princeton Review's 'cracking the GRE', the Barron GRE book, and the math workbook (don't remember which company). Combining different books helped a lot, because they explain things in different ways and focus more on specific things.

Hope that helps...Good luck!

 

[rachroo]

How far in advance did you start studying for the GRE? I've heard some people say 2 weeks and others say 3 months...

 

[DVMorBust]

I've been studying off and on for the past year as I've been planning on different test dates and then pushing it back a few months, but nothing too serious. At the beginning of this summer, I started really worked at it for a few weeks and went through all the books and review on math, doing the practice for each section (algebra vs. graphs, etc.). Then real life crept in, and all I did for the majority of the summer was a practice test here or there to keep up with it.

A couple weeks before the test, I started going at it again, taking a practice test a day and tons of problems. It actually really helped to have that break, because coming back I knew what I'd actually learned (thus, what I only had to go over briefly on occasion to keep up with) and what I really needed to work on.

 

[twelvetigers]

Wow, that's pretty awesome. Good job!

 

[NittanyKitty]

Congratulations! What a great booster during application season! 🙂

 

[rexosaurus]

seriously?! Wow.... 👍

 

[ShelterGirl]

Awesome.