About a month back, I had the fortune to finish my GRE. For ones who don’t know what it is, it is basically an overpriced exam conducted by the ETS. It is the starting point of the most sought after education portal, the other end of which is most likely to be a university in the US of A. It is relatively easy compared to the alternatives for higher education (like GATE) in India. Its just that it involves a lot of money for two years of masters, which is justified with the terms ‘More exposure’, ‘Better education’, ‘More money’, ‘Better lives’ etc. So you have a pretty good picture now.
Like I said, my aim was mostly to not work so hard to get an admission into a good graduate school and GRE is just for people like me. I tried my hand at GATE once, heh.. lets call it a carnage and leave it there. GRE tests you with high school level maths and Tolkien kinda English. Both seemed equally inappropriate, unnecessary and absurd. Common, even the Pope wouldn’t use that kinda lingo! But I stopped bitching after I wrote GATE.
Anyhoo… The idea is to convey that the GRE is an infernal four-hour never-ever-again-in-my-life exam.
What I was told to do for the GRE by friends and family:
One month is enough if you are a student, but two months since you work too..! Quant is something that can be easily managed. English you gotta mug a lotta words that you will never use again in your life, but you gotta do it. Thats coz’ most Indian graduates manage around 790-800/800 in quant but they get screwed in English. Study material? Dont’t bother going to all these classes. They are a total rip off. Use Barron’s GRE as the base material, Kaplan’s GRE and some Princeton Review material if you can borrow it from someone. Barron’s has a master wordlist that contains 3500 words. Its necessary for you to mug all of that.
Gulp…!
Who in the world would be able to mug 3500 words..??! You don’t mug words! You come across them when you read books. The more of a reader you are the more words you know. Apart from this, if you are the sorts who did jumbled word puzzles, solved crosswords on all topics ranging from ancient dinosaurs species to medical science, etc, all your life, you would know helluva lotta words! If all these are not applicable, then you gotta be blessed with great memory!
Fine.. I collected all these (in)famous materials. There are 50 word lists in the the Barron’s. I reached only till the sixth list. That was my “to hell with it!” point.
Honestly, I did try. Now, looking back, I admit people can mug words. Its just that I aint one of them! I know people who could remember the page number and the lateral position of a certain word word on that page. These people are second only to the ones who can probably tell the x-y-z coordinates of the word!
Considering my predicament, I had pretty much called it quits for verbal, but to feel better and shake of the insecurity, I decided to go through the Barron’s three-thousand-freaking-five-hundred word list to see how much I knew. This exercise was a big confidence booster. More than 50% of the words turned out to be the ones you would use in everyday lingo. There were several of them which I could use but did not know the exact meaning of it. I made a mental note to look those up. All in all, I felt like I knew enough. It is also likely that the major contributing reason to this judgment was not how many words I already knew but pure unadulterated laziness coupled with an extreme aversion to mugging.
So, out of the two months I had, I chilled through the first month. Did not bother with anything. The next month, it seemed like I had a mental countdown timer active which is probably why I started preparing. Quant seemed pretty much a cake walk. It made me think how stupid I should have been to find geometry, ratio, proportions, etc difficult back in high school. The last two weeks, I started taking simulated tests.
After my first test, I realized why the GRE could be difficult. It is a very different testing environment. It takes some time to get used to this. It is extremely time intensive. The simulated tests are not even computer adaptive, which is what it is in the real exam.
For those who don’t know what Computer Adaptive (in the GRE context) is, this section is for you! It is something like this. The first question you get, it will be of easy or of average difficulty. Based on whether you get it or screw it up, the computer ‘adapts’ and changes the difficulty level of the next question. So basically, it is a good sign if you feel the questions are getting tougher but not so good if they are getting easier! Tougher questions mean that you are at a higher lever, which if maintained would result in a high score. The quality (i.e. level) of the question also depends on how many people get it right. If many people get it right, the question is deemed easy, difficult if it is the other way around. Also, not all questions have the same impact on increasing or decreasing your score. Most books recommend 20-15-10 rule for quant (i.e. 20 minutes for first 10 questions, 15 minutes for the next 10 and 10 minutes for the last) because the first ten questions have the maximum impact on you score. Impact decreases for the next ten and so on. This is because later on the system is trying to ‘fine tune’ your score later on. Hence it is possible to score cent percent even if you get a couple of questions wrong towards the end.
Weird huh…? Read on…
ETS also claims that the scores of the test-takers are always ‘Bell’ or ‘Gaussian’ shaped (the time span of the scores is something I am not sure about). A Bell curve is a statistical graph which has an inverted bell shape. The characteristic of the data that forms a bell curve is that majority of the data is close to the average and only a few scores are extremely high or extremely low. So if all the scores by the test takers in a day are to form a Gaussian curve, the difficulty level of the questions you get will also be dependent on how the ones before you have done! So as you are doing better and better, the system might try to pull you down to keep you in the average range, if people before you have done well. On the other hand, if you are messing up, the system might try to give you slight push so that you are closer to the average. If people before you have sucked at the test, then the system might push you higher and probably give you a high score in order to push up the average.
What does this all mean? Please read your horoscope. Consult your family astrologer and see if you have a ‘Shani’ inhibition and take appropriate measures.
Just kidding…
Your score depends on the day. Preparation is good but doesn’t guarantee anything. Someone with a score of 1450 is not necessarily better than the one who gets a 1200. A comparison can probably be made if two candidates have taken the test on the same day.
So why bother studying..? As you might have guessed, this is just a feel good factor. Following this is a matter or your own conscience and judgment.
Lets cut to the day of the exam. I had already finished my TOEFL, the details of which are as entertaining (I hope…) as this one, but similar nonetheless. So the whole thing till the starting of the exam didn’t feel alien. The GRE starts with the writing section where you have to write an issue essay and an argument essay (45 min+30 min). This is something that nobody would have done in their simulated tests and it pretty much drains you out. After that starts the real test!
I got creamed in quant! There were a few surprises in the test which I wasn’t prepared for. Supposedly the format of the GRE had changed in Nov 2007, after which quant section has been becoming steadily difficult. I guess I got caught in the net. Verbal was a massacre as usual. I just played along, thinking that even if I got the lowest score of the day I would never ever write this exam again. The GRE tends to get really tiring when you are halfway through it. You just don’t have the energy nor the interest to continue. At the end of it I just didn’t care what score I got.
My exam was over! The computer was telling me that I can either see my score or reject it. I was gonna see my score…
The monitor turned off…
I am not kidding, I am not making this stuff up to give a Frederick Forsyth style anticlimax. The monitor actually turned off!
I soon realized what went wrong. Once the test was over I had sunk into my seat to rest my wailing back. In the process, my foot had knocked off the power plugs of the computer. After a moment of resetting it, the system rebooted.
oh God-holy crap-freaking bloody hell-does this mean I lost the score-please! I don’t wanna write this again…
This is not even ten percent of all the chaos that was going on within my head. How the bloody hell could they be so careless after charging seven and a half grand for an exam! I raised my hand and looking at the surveillance camera. The invigilator walked in. He figured out what had happened.
“Oh nothing to worry, I will login and you can continue from where you left.”
I must admit, I hadn’t felt so happy for a long time. All of this even before I saw the score. I guess this is testimony to how much I detested the test. I was just going to take whatever the hell I got and scram.
Quantitative ability: 750
Verbal ability: 550
A 1300! I hadn’t even gotten past 1200 in my practice tests! I went in thinking that I would be satisfied with a 1200. This was great considering the likes of the twisted logic I was using to slack off and not study verbal. The best part of this score was the realization that I did not have to even think of writing it again.
In conclusion, there is no set way to prepare. There is no point in postponing your test so that you are better prepared. The most significant factor that decides your score is the conditions of the day. Of course, preparation helps but you should probably know where to draw the line. You will easily get a 1200-1300 if you are of average intelligence and speak/write decent English. Anything more than this, the effort required goes up exponentially, which in my opinion is not worth it.
Disclaimer: Opinions and conclusions stated here are from my personal experience. You are not expected to follow or agree with them. However, if you do, good luck with that. If some ‘facts’ (not opinions) have been misquoted please do let me know. Like everyone, I hate to be corrected and so I will sulk about it but will eventually correct them
