Chapter 2
IN THIS CHAPTER
Managing your time before and during the test
Deciding whether to retake the GRE
Taking action if the test isn’t administered properly
Using scores up to five years old
The GRE isn’t an IQ test. Nor is it a measure of your worth as a human being or a predictor of your ultimate success in life. The GRE is designed to assess your ability to excel in grad school by sizing you up in three areas:
This book can’t help you in the first area: That’s all you. As a study guide, however, this book shapes you up in the second and third areas, enabling you to study more effectively and efficiently and improve your overall test-taking skills. By knowing the material and taking the practice tests, you establish a foundation for doing well on the GRE.
This chapter is designed to take your study skills and test-taking ability to the next level. To beat the GRE at its game, you need to maximize the use of your time, focus on key areas, and apply strategies to answer the questions quickly and correctly. This chapter shows you how to do all these things and provides you with a Plan B — what to do if things don’t go so well the first time.
As soon as you decide to take the GRE, the clock starts ticking. You have only so much time to study and practice, and suddenly so little time before the exam is tomorrow morning. The good news: I’ve taken many a student down this road, with great results, and here I’ve distilled the best of the success strategies. The following sections show you how to optimize your study and practice time so you can answer the test questions more efficiently.
As an undergrad, you may have mastered the fine art of cramming the night before an exam, but that doesn’t work on the GRE. This test is based less on memorization and more on skills, which take time to develop. Give yourself plenty of time to absorb all the material you need to study. Here’s what I recommend in terms of total time, the amount of that time you spend working through this book, and the amount of time to set aside per day:
This book provides broad coverage of everything you’re likely to encounter on the test, but if taking the practice tests reveals weaknesses in certain areas, you may need to consult additional resources to improve your understanding and skills.
Just because you know a subject inside and out doesn’t mean you can ace it on the GRE. Test-taking requires a completely separate skill set. Start taking practice tests at least two weeks prior to your scheduled GRE so you have time to hone your skills, learn from your mistakes, and strengthen your weak areas. I once had a group of financial advisors struggle with the math portion. When I asked them about this, the answer was that they use Excel for everything!
In addition to working the practice tests in this book, I recommend working the free computer-based practice tests that Educational Testing Service (ETS) provides at www.ets.org
. See Chapter 3 for details.
Taking the GRE is a little like playing Beat the Clock. The computer provides you with a stopwatch — an on-screen clock — to time each section. Your goal is to answer as many questions correctly as quickly as possible before the clock reaches 0:00. You have the option of hiding the on-screen clock, but I don’t recommend this. Instead, make the on-screen timer familiar and comfortable (or rather, less uncomfortable) by using a stopwatch while doing homework and practice tests. Practicing with a stopwatch is part of preparing for the test-taking experience.
Don’t obsess over giving each question a specific number of seconds, but do know when to give up and come back to a question later. As long as you haven’t exited a section, you can return to questions in that section. Simply call up the Review Screen by clicking Review, click the question you want to return to, and then click Go to Question. You can mark a question for review so it’s flagged on the Review Screen, or you can write the question number down on your scrap paper. Just keep in mind that while you’re on the Review Screen, the clock still ticks. (See Chapter 3 for more about the computer version of the test.)
Upon completing the exam, you have the option of accepting and seeing your scores immediately or canceling the results if you think you did poorly. If you cancel the results, you can always retake the test. Most schools consider only your highest exam score, or you can choose to send only that highest score (see the ScoreSelect discussion in Chapter 1), so I’d only cancel if you really think something went south on test day that isn’t normal for you.
If you cancel a score and later have second thoughts about that cancellation, you can reinstate the canceled score up to 60 days after the test date. As of this writing, the service costs $50, and reinstatement takes up to two weeks.
If you proceed with your exam score and it isn’t so hot, don’t fret: Most test-takers who repeat the exam tend to do much better the second time. It’s as if there’s no better way to prepare for the GRE than taking the GRE. Of course, you want to avoid having to do this, but if the first round doesn’t go so well, it’s okay.
If you think you underperformed on the GRE, consider the following when deciding whether to retake it and when preparing to retake the exam:
What went wrong here? If you made mistakes because of a lack of familiarity with either the test format (you didn’t understand what to do when faced with a Quantitative Comparison question) or substance (you didn’t know the vocabulary words or were baffled by the geometry problems), these are easy gaps to close, and you’re a good candidate for doing better the second time.
The practice tests are designed to help you address these issues ahead of time: If you know what you did wrong, you can mend your ways and improve your score.
After taking the actual GRE, you don’t get to review the correct and incorrect answer choices. However, you can get a good sense of the types of mistakes that you’re likely to make by going through the practice tests in this book and reviewing your wrong answers afterward.
Can repeating the exam hurt you? Typically, no. Most schools consider only your highest score. Find out from the individual schools you’re interested in whether that’s their policy; it isn’t the same for every school. If you’re on the borderline, or if several students are vying for one spot, sometimes having taken the exam repeatedly can hurt you (especially if your most recent score took a nosedive). On the other hand, an admissions counselor who sees several exams with ascending scores may be impressed that you stuck to it and kept trying, even if your score rose only slightly. In general, if you’re willing to invest the study time and effort and take the repeat exam seriously, go for it.
All your test scores for the past five years are part of your record, but you can choose which scores to send using the ScoreSelect option, as I explain in Chapter 1. For example, if you did great in October but not so well in April, you can tell ETS to send just the October scores to the schools.
Your test isn’t actually administered by ETS. It’s administered by a company licensed by ETS, and the company is required to adhere to certain standards. If something odd happens during the test that you believe negatively affected your score, such as construction noises, no working air-conditioning (I’m in Phoenix), or anything else that shouldn’t be the case, register a complaint with ETS at GRE-Info@ets.org
for a chance to have those scores cancelled and for you to retake the exam, at no charge. You have seven days to register a complaint, so don’t delay.
One of my students was seated and ready to begin the GRE, only to have the test start time delayed an hour! On top of that, a lot of noise was coming from the next room — definitely an unwarranted distraction. If something like this happens to you, you can petition to have your score withheld and for the opportunity to take the GRE again at no charge.
What if you took the GRE a long time ago when you thought you were going to grad school and then opted to take a job or start a family instead? Well, if it was within the past five years, you’re in luck (assuming you scored well). GRE scores are reportable for up to five years. That means that if you’re pleased with your old score, you can send it right along to the school of your choice and say adios to this book right here and now. However, if you took the test more than five years ago, you have to take it again.