Of course, there's so much more to talk about
with the GRE than we can cover there, so I really wanted to hit that high spots.
I do want to frame this.
Many of you have probably heard that the GRE changed recently.
So the information I can give you tonight is about the new GRE.
Do you have any questions about the old one?
Happy to answer them later.
But everything I'm talking about tonight is about the new GRE.
And I actually want to start out by talking about what the GRE isn't,
and that seems a little backwards,
but I think this can hopefully address some of the questions you may have.
The first thing is that the GRE is not an intelligence test.
GRE can't test how smart you are.
Interestingly enough, the GRE also doesn't test
the kind of material that you'll be asked to study in graduate programs.
It doesn't even ask you to write the kinds of essays
that you'll be asked to write in most graduate programs.
In fact, it's not even very good at telling how well you'll do
in graduate school.
It's not a very good predictor of graduate school performance.
What the GRE does is something very, very specific.
It's a really good test of how well you take the GRE.
It's a pretty specialized skill.
And the good thing about that is that it's a skill like any other,
and you can get better at it.
If you think back to when you first learn how to tie your shoes or type
or do yoga or any of the things you know how to do in your life.
When you first started those, they felt a lot less familiar
than they started
to feel like you did some practice, and the GRE's exactly like that.
I like to think of it as sort of the best preparation is almost like test
taking yoga, right?
It's really sort of building a set of mental muscles
that work in a very specific way relative to this exam.
So what it is testing
is actually a lot of stuff that you already know
that you haven't thought about for a long time.
Most of the material is tested on the GRE is stuff that you learned
in high school, right?
So, yeah, you're going to have to do a little brushing up.
There's some some review to be done,
but the part of the GRE that can make it so challenging,
other than a lot of the fears that we have going into it,
is the fact that they're going to ask you
to deal with this material that you haven't seen since high school.
Really fast.
So pick a number.
Raise your hand if you picked a number between one and ten.
Keep your hands up.
Also, raise your hand if you picked it out between one and a hundred.
Keep your hands up.
Also, raise your hand if you picked any whole number.
So half the people up?
How come? Right?
Thank you put your hands down now.
So the GRE knows this right?
Because the GRE is really smart about how we've been trained to answer questions.
Right. Some person just randomly asked to pick a number.
You're relying on your prior training, right?
Prior academic training of our life training to answer that question.
The GRE knows a lot about how we tend to answer questions.
Right.
So that's the technical definition of what makes a hard question on the GRE.
A hard question on the GRE is one that people tend not to answer correctly.
And an easy question on the GRE is one that we tend to answer correctly.
And knowing things like that about how the GRE works
is what really will help you make your preparation targeted.
Okay.
So as we sort of talk about how the test is put together
and the kinds of things that are tested on it,
I want you to always be thinking about your process through navigating
this test in terms of really focusing on what you need to get out of the GRE
and how you can target all of your preparation
and all your planning to exactly what the GRE does,
because there's lots of ways that you can study in lots of ways
that you can do preparation that isn't really about how this test works.
So taking a sort of step back then
to what the GRE actually is, it's the GRE, the general record exam.
It's sort of the adult version of the SAT that's made by the same company
that brought you the SAT.
I'm sure you remember fondly.
There are actually two kinds of GREs.
There's the general test,
and that's the one that almost everyone needs to take to get into graduate school.
There are also a series of subject exams and not everyone has to take those.
Not all programs require those.
In fact, many don't.
So tonight, I'm just going to focus on the general test.
If you have questions about any of the specific subjects
tests, I'm happy to answer them during the Open House portion.
So the GRE General Test is a computer adaptive test,
and that computer portion matters for two main reasons.
The first one is a big one.
It means that you can take the test almost any day of the year,
and it's given mostly days, lots of weekends.
You can go online, register to take the test, basically making an appointment.
You go to the one of the centers.
Either Montlake Terrace or Puyallup if you're in this area
and take your test.
But the other reason that it's a computer test
that matters is that it's a three and a half hour test on the computer.
So part of your planning needs to be building your sort of taking long
computer test muscles, which is something that we don't exercise that often.
So in the same way that you have to prepare for a really long hike
that you're planning, you want to prepare for taking this this fairly long exam.
It's about three and a half hours.
So when you take the test, there are three major
categories of activities you have to do or things that they're testing.
The first thing that you'll do
when you take the test is a series of two essays, right?
This is called the Analytical Writing Assessment Portion of the test.
So two, thirty minute essays on topics you don't really care about,
but one of them asks you to take a position on an issue.
The other one asks you to analyze an argument.
For each of those, you'll get a score between zero and six.
Those are averaged.
So the...
in response to your your essays, you're going to have a score between
zero and six.
You also have a quantitative portion of the test.
These are the math questions, they just give it a fancy name.
Just math questions.
Here, what you're testing is arithmetic and literally adding and subtracting,
multiplying and dividing.
Algebra, algebra two and geometry.
So when I said it was stuff that you were studying in high school,
I haven't thought about it that much since then.
That's what I'm talking about. Right.
The good thing is that the math that they're testing is a pretty narrow
range of math in the world.
Right. There's no calculus on this.
They're not even testing all of geometry.
Right.
It's a pretty core set of areas that they're testing.
So you can really focus your review in that area.
You'll have between two and three sections of multiple choice, math questions.
And from those, you'll receive a score of between 130 and 170.
That's one of the new pieces on the GRE, is this change in the scoring scale.
So you'll have a math score of 130 to 170.
You'll also answer multiple choice questions on verbal reasoning.
These are reading comprehension.
A little bit of logical reasoning and a lot of vocabulary.
They test the vocabulary and context, and text completion.
And again, the good thing here is that they're not testing
all of the vocabulary in the work.
Admittedly, it's not vocabulary you use very often,
but you don't have to memorize the whole dictionary.
So part of how you prepare for the GRE verbal section is by learning
about the kind of difficulty of vocabulary in the test and focusing on the words
that are most likely to test you during the exam.
So when you answer all the verbal questions,
you'll also get a score between 130 and 170.
So at the end of the test you got an essay score zero to six.
You've got a math score, 130 to 170, and a verbal score 130 to 170.
At which point everyone always asks, "So what makes a good score on the GRE,"
or "What is a good score on the GRE?" And the answer is, it's
the one that gets you into the programs you want to go to.
No more, no less.
And that puts some of the burden on you.
To really do that research.
You need to find out for the programs that you're applying to,
what kinds of scores they're looking for and how do they use them.
So you need to contact the programs that you're applying to and find out
do you have the threshold score?
Are you just looking for me to have a score above a certain line?
And then you factor in other aspects of the application?
Are you looking for the highest scores possible, higher the better?
Are you prioritizing one section of the test over another?
There are programs that look primarily at the verbal or primarily
the math, for instance.
How does this program that you're applying to handle
multiple scores if you decide to take the test more than once?
And do they use the scores as part of any funding decision?
So that's the first thing
you want to find out in building your own road map to the GRE.
Is where do I need to get?
The next thing is you need to figure out the timeline.
So over the last few months, it was taking a little bit longer
for scores to be reported as they made this transition to the new GRE.
But we're pretty much at the point now where it's the regular processing times.
You're looking at on average about two weeks.
So you need a minimum of two weeks, but you also need some preparation time.
And you may want to be able to build in a buffer if you have that time
to be able to take the test multiple times if you need to.
Okay?
So you got to work backwards from those deadlines to figure out your timeline.
But the most important piece, in addition to figuring out
what the scores they're looking for is, figure out where you're starting from.
You need to take a practice test because knowing where you need to get
isn't the only piece of information that you need to figure out that road map.
You need to know where you're starting from.
So take a practice test.
You can do that through ETS, the people that make the exam.
You can also do it at the Princeton Review website for free.
Princeton Review dot com.
You can take a practice test there, gives you starting scores,
and you can compare those and say, "Hey, if I'm really close
maybe all I need to do is a little bit of review."
If, "I have more improvement that I need to see to get where I want to go,"
then you need to add in more time, and you need to be more strategic
about the kind of preparation you need to do?
So the one thing - I know we don't have a lot more time.
So the one thing that I want to leave you with is
really focus your preparation toward your goals, where you need to get,
and really focus your preparation on the test as it's given.
Because, for instance, the way you write the essays on the GRE is very different
from the way that you write essays on the personal statement.
So with that.