Much like the SAT that you probably took to get into college, the GRE—or the Graduate Record Exam, as it is officially known—is required for admissions by many graduate programs. GRE test takers include future engineers, historians, philosophers, psychologists, nurses, even veterinarians. In short, the GRE is used by just about any graduate program that is not medical school, law school, or business school. It may seem odd that a student who is applying for an advanced degree in architecture must take the same exam as a student applying for a degree in comparative literature. In many respects, it is. Because a wide variety of graduate programs rely upon the GRE rather than their own proprietary exam, GRE results are used in a wide variety of ways.
Some programs simply have a minimum combined score that all applicants must achieve. Other programs, such as a creative writing program, care far more about the Verbal score than they do about the Math score. One would think that engineering programs would care more about the Math score, as some do, but most engineering applicants score in the very highest percentiles on the GRE quantitative section and therefore Verbal scores, not Math, become a more effective tool for comparing one candidate to another.
If you are frustrated that the skills you have to dust off and polish for the GRE bear little resemblance to the subjects you will be studying in grad school, remember three things. First, the GRE is not a content test. It does not test a body of knowledge, like U.S. history or French. It is designed to test a very specific way of thinking. Second, taking the GRE is a skill, and like any other skill, it can be learned. That is what this book and Cracking the GRE are all about. With diligence and practice you can learn everything you need to know for the GRE, and you can do it in a surprisingly short period of time. Far less time, in fact, than it took you to learn physiology, Renaissance poetry, or whichever subject you plan to pursue in your graduate studies. The last thing to remember is that the GRE is only one factor of many that will be considered for admissions, and it is often the easiest to change.
The first task in preparing for the GRE is doing your graduate school research.
There is no such thing as a good GRE score or a bad GRE score. There is only the score you have and the score you need to get where you want to go. The gap between the two represents the amount of work you will have to do in the meantime. If you need an additional 50 points (on the old scale), that shouldn’t be too difficult to achieve. Polish up your vocabulary, master the pacing of the exam, and take some practice tests and you should do fine. If you need another 100 points (on the old scale), that will take some more work. You’ll need more vocab, you’ll need to identify and address your gaps on the Quantitative section and you’ll need more practice. If you can push yourself to do that on your own, this book and access to a few practice tests should be all you need. If you need more than 100 points (on the old scale), or you aren’t likely to put in the time on your own, you will need a course or a tutor. It all starts with the research. Once you know the score you have and the score you need, you will know how much time you need to put in to prepare for the real test.
How schools weight the scores, assuming they can even answer this question, will differ not only from school to school, but even from student to student. Schools may use GRE scores to validate the verbal abilities of international students with really fantastic essays. GRE scores may be used in lieu of work experience for applicants who are only a year or two out of undergrad, or as a more recent snapshot for adult students returning to school after a decade or so. Mostly they are just there so that schools have an apples-to-apples comparison of applicants with a wildly divergent range of undergrad, work, and life experiences. Also, most applicants are pretty qualified. Often the scores are there as an easy way to narrow down the pool.
How your program uses your scores will determine quite a bit about how you prepare for the test. The following is a list of questions to ask when you call up your target school.
Schools generally do a pretty good job of telling applicants what is required (application, recommendation, essays, portfolios, test scores, transcripts), but how one factor is weighed against another is a murky science. Typically a GPA or current work experience will weigh far more heavily than a GRE score. On the other hand, if your GPA is on the low side, you will want your GRE scores to be as high as possible to prove that you can do the work.
In other words, competitive is your program? A highly competitive program may not weigh GRE scores very heavily, but if they are rejecting 60 percent of their applicants, every number they see will matter.
Some schools look only at the most recent; some will combine, but most prefer to use the highest. The CAT test is not like any other test most students have ever taken. The first time people take it is often not their best. The second time, however, students are more comfortable, and scores tend to jump up—even if it is only a week or two later. Plan on taking the test twice.
If schools don’t, and most don’t, you won’t have to spend valuable time practicing this portion of the test.
This is for programs like engineering or English lit, which are clearly weighted toward one side of the test or another. It would be great news if you found out that you could blow off the Math section altogether, no?
How do you rank? Are you below the average or above it? Larger programs may have and publish these numbers; smaller ones may not. This will tell you a lot about how much work you have to put in between now and test day.
It is in a school’s interest to have a well-informed, serious applicant. Student who drop out of grad school because they’ve chosen the wrong career path, can’t manage the workload, don’t like the program, or simply found that the program in particular (or grad school in general) was not what they’d hoped it would be, have wasted both the school’s time and money as well as their own. In many ways, the application process is all about identifying those students who will stay in the field and go on to rain glory down upon their alma mater. Students who don’t fit that description are far more likely to drop out of the program. Those students and that tuition are hard to replace (advanced standing and executive programs are often a way for schools to take advantage of excess capacity freed up by vacating students).
In short, don’t be afraid to pick up the phone and start your research. The more you know, the easier the process becomes, and the more likely it is that you get accepted—and the more likely it is that you make a wise choice with this investment of time (years), money (hundreds of thousands), and opportunity costs (how far would those same two years get you if you stayed where you are?). This is important.
If you have done your research and you know exactly where you want to go and why, then the GRE simply becomes a small hurdle that you must cross on your way. The GRE is an eminently surmountable hurdle. If you are not committed to the end game, the GRE may become a barrier rather than just a hurdle. If you are not clear on why you are going through this very long, expensive, and onerous process, then going out for drinks with friends on a Thursday night may seem far more worth while than sitting down to take another practice test, and therein lies the problem.
Getting serious about the research is the first step towards getting serious GRE scores.
You will receive a Math score, a Verbal score and an Analytic Writing score. These correspond to the three types of sections you will see on the test. Section by section, here’s how the test breaks down:
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Your essay sections will always come first. These are two back-to-back essays, each 30 minutes. After the essays you will have one of your first multiple-choice sections, and then you get your one and only proper break. Most students will see five multi-question sections, either two verbal and three math or three verbal and two math. Two Verbal sections and two Math sections will always count. The extra section is experimental. It may be math or verbal, it will look just like the other sections, but it will not count. These five sections, including the experimental, could occur in any order. There is no way to know which section is experimental. You will have a one minute break between each of these sections.
Occasionally they will give you a research section in place of the experimental section. If so, it will come last; they will identify it as a research section and will tell you that it does not count. If you see one of these, your test is over and your first four multi-question sections counted.
The total testing time is close to four hours. It is a long four hours full of intense concentration. For those who are not prepared it can also be full of lots of stress, and the atmosphere in the testing centers is not exactly designed to put you at ease.
When you are taking practice tests make sure to complete all sections, even the essays, because stamina is an issue. Frequently students will focus just on areas of weakness or blow off the essay because they’re not concerned about the essay score. This is a mistake. Knowing how your brain works after two to three hours of close concentration is big part of being prepared.
The testing center can be an intimidating place. You will be asked to show ID when you come in. You will be issued a locker where you can store your belongings, since you cannot bring anything with you into the test center. Then you will be asked to fill out a questionnaire and a legal disclaimer stating that you are who you say you are and that your reasons for taking the test are on the up and up (no taking it just for fun!). The test center caters to people taking a wide variety of tests, including TOEFL tests, citizenship tests, and others. This means that you will be sitting in a very plain institutional waiting room with a bunch of other fidgety, stressed-out people until you are called to the testing room.
In the testing room you will be issued a cubical with a computer, six sheets of scratch paper, two pencils, and a set of headphones. Tests such as the TOEFL have an audible component, but the head phones are also used to block out the noises from the cubicles around you. This is usually a good thing, since you will hear people smacking their foreheads, reading out loud, cursing, crying, and occasionally laughing. The fellow testing next to you may be watching his future dissolve before his very eyes. He may find the fact that you are humming to yourself, chuckling, and generally having a swell time—since you are so well prepared—a bit unnerving. That’s why they have headphones.
In the beginning of the test you will be given a tutorial on how to use the computer (scrolling, clicking with the mouse, accepting answers, etc.). We certainly hope that you feel prepared enough to skip this section (everyone is so nervous that they might miss something—although, in truth, almost no one does). If you have taken a few practice tests, you know what to do. Save yourself the extra eyeball time and skip the section.
The first section you will see is the 30-minute Analysis of an Issue essay. You will be given a choice between two issue topics. The clock starts as soon as the two topics appear on screen. A complete list of the issue topics can be found on Educational Testing Service’s (ETS) website. The tester has a basic word-processing function that will allow you to cut, paste, erase, and scroll. It does not have a spell-checker, but spelling is not tested on the GRE.
The second section is the 30-minute Analysis of an Argument essay. In this section, you cannot choose your argument. A complete list of potential arguments can be found on the ETS website in the same place. The two essays are considered your first section. You will then get two multiple-choice sections; they could be math and verbal or verbal, in any order. After your third section, you will be offered an optional 10-minute break. Use it to flap your arms a bit to get your blood flowing or rest your eyeballs. You could use it to go to the bathroom, but you’d have to be quick. Take as much time as you need to refresh yourself, but the more time you take the longer you’ll be stuck in your cubical. Technically you are not allowed to use your scratch paper during untimed sections, but this is not always enforced.
Most students will have five multiple-choice sections. All five will look like typical Verbal or Math sections but only two of the three will count. The uncounted section is experimental. One Math and one Verbal section will count for sure. The experimental section may be either math or verbal and may occur anywhere between sections two and six. Occasionally ETS will identify the experimental section. They typically do this when they have really strange stuff to test and don’t want to entirely freak out the test takers. For the most part, the experimental section is used to gather data on new questions so that they can be added to the general pool of scored questions. In other words, you are paying ETS to do their R&D for them and you are doing it when you are at your most stressed and your time is the most valuable. Sorry.
ETS may also add a “research” section. If they do this, it will come after the multiple-choice sections and they will attempt to bribe you with an infinitesimally small chance at winning a pathetically small scholarship ($500) toward your grad school tuition. Unless you are a particularly generous soul, don’t bother.
After you have taken the scored portion of the exam, you will be given the opportunity to cancel your scores. After four hours, everyone tends to believe that they did worse than they actually did. Unless you passed out mid section, left five to ten questions blank, or started hallucinating while on the clock, there is not much to be gained from canceling the scores. If you cancel, you will never know how you did. Your test fee is non-refundable. Your record will reflect that you took the test on this day but that you cancelled your scores. At this point you should know how your programs will deal with multiple scores. Unless you have a really compelling reason to believe that your scores were a disaster, accept them.
In addition to the dubious honor of contributing to ETS’s research and development, your registration fee also buys you score reporting for up to four schools. Normally, if you wish to have scores sent to school, ETS will charge you approximately $15 per school. On test day, however, the first four schools are included. This will be the last section of your test. You might as well take advantage of it. Some students are reluctant to send scores to first-choice schools because they don’t yet know their scores. Send them anyway. If you are planning to apply to a particular school, they will see all of your prior scores, even if you take the test five times. If you don’t apply they’ll put the scores in a file and, after a year or two, they’ll throw them away. You have nothing to lose from sending out the scores. If you happen to know the school and department code for the schools of your choice, this part will go a bit faster. If not, no problem; you will have to negotiate a series of drop-down menus by state, school, and department.
You will have one minute between sections. You cannot skip questions, and you cannot go back to a question once you have entered and accepted an answer. Once you have completed the test, the computer will give you the option to accept your scores. Once you accept, they will show you your Math and Verbal scores only. Writing scores and percentiles will come about ten days later in the mail. You must turn in your scratch paper and collect your ID on your way out (and you have to leave the headphones there too).
It is a long and grueling process. The more you have prepared, the less stress you will feel on test day. You can walk out of the test center feeling elated that it’s over and good about your scores. Every math or verbal concept that you might see on the test is contained in this book. For the well-prepared student, there should be no surprises on test day. You should know precisely what your target score is and how to achieve it.
Before August of 2011 the GRE was scored on a 200−800 point scale, per section, in 10-point increments—much like the SAT. A student might receive a 650 on the Math section and a 590 on the Verbal, for example. When the test changed, it was imperative that ETS changed the score scale as well to avoid any confusion between old and new test scores. You can imagine what would happen if it stayed the same. Students would say that they got a 600 on the Math section, and admissions officers would never know if that was a 600 on the old test or the new one.
The GRE Revised General Test is scored on a 130−170 point scale in one-point increments. A student might get a 159 on the Math and a 152 on the Verbal. The new scale includes only 40 gradations between the highest possible score and the lowest, whereas the old test included 60.
ETS claims that the new test minimizes the perception of differences between scores that are really only separated by one or two gradations. That means that the difference between a 580 and a 600 seems much bigger than the difference between 148 and a 150. This doesn’t give much credit to the intelligence of admissions professionals who understand the difference between a 1- and a 10-point scale, but they needed to change the scale anyway.
Essays, on the other hand, will continue to be scored on the same 1−6 point scale in half-point increments. Students will receive a single averaged essay score for both essays. Quarter point increments are rounded up.
In addition to this book you have some other worthwhile resources to consider:
Power Prep—There is a new Power Prep sample test on the ETS website. It is not adaptive, but it does mimic the functionality and style of the new GRE Revised General Test.
PrincetonReview.com contains one full-length, free GRE Revised General Test and a free online course demo. It also contains e-mail tips for test takers, and Word du Jour to help with your vocabulary.
Cracking the GRE—While this book is primarily about providing additional practice items for each subject, Cracking the GRE is like a full course in your hands. It contains all of the strategies, tips, and advice that have the made The Princeton Review the best standardized test-preparation company in the world.
Verbal Workout for the New GRE—This book gives you everything you need to tackle the verbal portion of the GRE test. It includes hundreds of practice exercises to sharpen your skills, as well as the Hit Parade for the GRE, a list of the 300 vocabulary words that most frequently appear on the exam.
Math Workout for the New GRE—This book goes into greater depth on each of the key math skills you will need on the test and contains multiple drills for each skill you may encounter on test day.
Crash Course for the New GRE—This slim volume summarizes all of the major approaches. It is a great and focused review for those who are short on time.
This book is all about building good test-taking habits, not about finding answers.
Over four hours of testing, your brain will get tired. When it gets tired, it will get sloppy. You might find yourself reading a question twice before it registers in your brain. You might start to skip small but key words, or you might find yourself staring at a problem for 30 seconds before you realize what you have to do. When you get tired you begin to do things by habit without really thinking about them actively. If your habits are good, they will help carry you even when your brain starts to check out. If you have not taken the time to create good test-taking habits, well, you just get sloppy. Sloppiness will kill your score.
The creation of habits requires repetition and that’s where this book comes in. You have large groups of similar question types that you can do over and over again until you learn to instantly recognize the opportunity and respond correctly.
There is a finite quantity of GRE practice material on the market. It is entirely possible to burn through all of it without improving your score by as much as one point. In fact, you may end up further reinforcing bad habits rather than creating new good ones. This happens when you focus on finding answers to each individual question without looking for larger patterns, working to practice and refine your approach, or using the practice material as an opportunity to create good GRE habits. Use Cracking the GRE to establish your approach to different question types. Then work your way through this book to cement those approaches into an automatic habit. When you do this, time and large score fluctuations will cease to be an issue. There will be no such thing as having a good or bad day on test day. You will be in control and will have your scores right where you want them.
If you want to change your score, you must change the way you take the test.
If you are under a time crunch or just need to shore up some weaknesses, this is your first step. Take the math and verbal assessment tests provided at the beginning of the book. Check your scores and find your areas of weakness. Pick two or three to focus on. The number of questions in a drill represents the frequency with which the question type shows up on most GRE Revised General Tests. Start with the high-frequency topics and focus on those first.
Each question type begins with a brief synopsis of the basic approach. Read these sections carefully. These approaches have been tried, tested, and refined by hundreds of test takers over the years. They are here because they work. They represent the good habits. How does the approach described by the book differ from your own? Can yours be improved?
Use Cracking the GRE to work out your approach. Remember that the practice items don’t count. No one will ever see how you did. Now is the time to take some risks and try out some different ways to solve these problems. Again, it’s not about answers, it’s about approach. Some of the new techniques may feel awkward at first, but they’re there because they work. Stick with it.
Once you have found some patterns that work for you, move on to the drills in this book. Use your scratch paper, stick to your approach, and drill it until it becomes habit. By the time you are done, every time a question of that type pops up, your hand and your mind will know instinctively what to do, no matter how tired you get. This is powerful.
If you are just starting your GRE prep, need more than 50−60 points, or don’t yet have an approach, this book is not the place to start. This book is not for teaching. It is a workbook for practice and drilling. Cracking the GRE will go into the test and the techniques in far more depth. It will break down the approach to each question in a step-by-step manner with plenty of examples. Cracking the GRE is where you go to learn how to take the test; this is where you go to practice it.
The problem you’re working on will be in the middle of the screen. If there is additional information, such as a chart or graph or passage, it will be on a split screen either above the question or to the left of it. If the entire chart(s) or passage or additional information does not fit on the split screen there will be a scroll bar.
Questions with only a single answer will have an oval selection field. To select an answer, just click on the oval. A question with the potential for multiple correct answers will have square answer fields. An X appears in the square when you select the answer choice. At the bottom of the screen, under the question, there may be some basic directions, such as “Click on your choice.”
A read-out of the time remaining in the section will be displayed in the upper right corner. Next to it is a button that allows you to hide the time. No matter what, the time will return and will begin to blink on and off when you have five minutes remaining on a particular section. At the top-center the display will tell you which question number you are working on, out of the total number of questions. The top of the screen will also contain the following six buttons:
Exit Section: This button indicates that you are done with a particular section. Should you finish a section early, you can use this button to get to the next section. Once you’ve exited a section, however, you cannot return to it. Note that the two essays are considered a single section. If you use this button after your first essay, you will have skipped the second essay.
Review: This button brings up a review screen. The review screen will indicate which questions you’ve seen, which ones you’ve answered, and which ones you’ve marked. From the review screen you can return to the question you’ve just left, or you can highlight a particular question (once you’ve seen it) and Go To Question.
Mark: The mark button is just what it looks like. You may mark a question for whatever reason you choose. This does not answer the question. You may mark a question whether you’ve answered it or not. Marked questions will appear as marked on the review screen.
Help: The help button will drop you into the help tab for the particular question type you are working on. From there, there are three additional tabs. One gives you “Section Directions.” This is an overview of the section, including the number of questions, the amount of time allotted, and a brief description of the function of ovals vs. boxes. The second is “General Directions” on timing and breaks, test information, and the repeater policy. The last additional tab is “Testing Tools.” This is an overview of each of the buttons available to you during a section. Note that the help button will not stop the clock. The clock continues to run even if you are clicking around and reading directions.
Back/Next: These two buttons take you forward to the next question or back to the prior question. You can continue to click these as many times as you like until you get to the beginning or end of the section. If you return to a question you have answered, the question will display your answer.
We will talk more about strategies for pacing on the test and ways to use the mark and review buttons. You should never need the help button. Ideally you will be familiar enough with the functions of the test that you don’t have to spend valuable test time reading directions.
The new test is adaptive by section. Your score is determined by the number of questions you get right and their difficulty level. On the first Verbal section the test will give you a mix of medium questions. Based upon the percentage of questions you get right on that first section, the computer will select questions for the second section. The more you get right on the first section, the harder the questions you will see on the second section, but more potential points you could get.
Everything is determined by the number of questions you get right, not by the number of questions you answer. Accuracy, therefore, will always trump speed. It makes no sense to worry about the clock and to rush through a section if your accuracy suffers as a result.
On the GRE, there are questions and there are questions. Some are a breeze, while others will have you tearing your hair out. The new GRE has been constructed so that you can answer questions in any order you like, and the questions you get on the second section will depend upon the number of questions you get right on the first section. You can maximize that number by doing the questions you like first! Remember that every question counts equally towards your score. As you work through a section, if you see a question you don’t know how to answer, skip it. If you see one that looks as if it will take a long time, skip it. If you love geometry, but hate algebra, do all of the geometry questions first and leave the algebra questions for last.
Unless you are shooting for a 700 (on the old scale) or higher, you should NOT attempt to answer every single question.
As long as you are going to run out of time, you might as well run out of time on the questions you are least likely to get right. By leaving time-consuming and difficult questions for the end, you will be able to answer more questions overall and get more of them right. Do not mark questions you skip; we will use the mark function for something else. Just click “Next” and move on to the next question. The review screen will tell you which questions you have not answered.
Note: There is no guessing penalty on the GRE. They don’t take points away for a wrong answer. When you get to the two-minute mark, therefore, stop what you’re doing and bubble in any unanswered questions.
Any time you practice for a test you end up getting a few wrong. Later, when reviewing these questions, you end up smacking your forehead and asking yourself, “What was I thinking?” Alternately, you may find a problem utterly impossible to solve the first time around, only to look at it later and realize that it was actually quite easy; you just misread the question or missed a key piece of information.
On a four-hour test, your brain is going to get tired. When your brain gets tired, you’re going make mistakes. Typically these mistakes consist of misreadings or simple calculation errors. A misread question or a calculation error will completely change the way you see the problem. Unfortunately, once you see a question wrong, it is almost impossible to see it correctly. As long as you stay with that question, you will continue to see it wrong every time. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking and you’re not getting any closer to the answer. We call this “La La Land.” Once you’re in La La Land, it is very difficult to get out.
On the flip side, once you’ve spotted the error, solving the problem correctly requires only a moment. A question that bedeviled you for minutes on end in the middle of a test may appear to be appallingly obvious when viewed in the comfort of a post-test review. The trick is to change the way you see the question while you still have the opportunity to fix it.
Step 1—Recognize La La Land.
Step 2—Distract your brain.
Step 3—See the problem with fresh eyes and fix it.
Step 1—Recognize La La Land. This is often the hardest part of the process. The more work you’ve put into a problem, the more difficult it is to walk away from it. Once you get off track on a problem, however, any additional work you invest in that problem is wasted effort. No problem on the GRE, if you understand what’s being asked, should ever take more than a minute or two to solve. If you go over two minutes, you’re off track. Get out. If you find yourself working too hard, or plowing through reams of calculations, you are off track. Get out.
Here are a few signs that you are in La La Land:
If you find yourself in any of these situations, you are in La La Land. Stop what you’re doing and get out. You’ve got better things to do with your time than sitting around wrestling with this question.
Step 2—Distract your brain. When you find yourself faced with an immovable object, walk away. Think of it this way: You could spend four minutes on a question even when you know you’re stuck, or you could walk away and spend those same four minutes on three other easier questions and get them all right. Why throw good minutes after bad? Whether they realize it or not, ETS has actually designed the test to facilitate this process. This is where the mark button comes into play. If you don’t like a problem or don’t know how to solve it, just skip it. If you start a problem and get stuck, mark it and move to the next question before you waste too much time. Do two other problems (three tops) and then return to the problem that was giving you trouble. We’re fishing for that flash of insight here, given the chance to occur.
When you walk away from a problem, you’re not walking away entirely; you’re just parking it on the back burner. Your brain is still chewing on it, but it’s processing in the background while you work on something else. Sometimes your best insights occur when your attention is pointed elsewhere. Walk away from a problem early and often. You want to always have questions to use to distract your brain. If you take the test in order, you will not have questions available at the tail end of a section. On some difficult problems you may walk away more than once. It is okay to take two or three runs at a hard problem.
Step 3—See the problem with fresh eyes and fix it. You use other problems to distract your brain so that you can see a troublesome problem with fresh eyes. You can help this process out by trying to read the question differently when you return to it. Use your finger on the screen to force yourself to read the problem word for word. Are there different ways to express the information? Can you use the answer choices to help? Can you paraphrase the answer choices as well? If the path to the right answer is not clear on a second viewing, walk away again. Why stick with a problem you don’t know how to solve?
After pacing, the next most important global skill is the use of your scratch paper. On a regular test you can solve problems with a pencil right on the test page. On the GRE, you don’t have that luxury. Remember that taking the GRE Revised General Test is a skill, and like any other skill it can be practiced and learned. Your physical habits as a test taker are as important as your mental ones. In fact, your physical habits will be used to reinforce your mental ones. Remember that the test is chock-full of tricks and answer choices designed to tempt the tired mind. If your hand is not moving it means that you are answering questions in your head. That is precisely what ETS wants because they have a million students a year testing out their tricks on the experimental section. They are extremely good at it. Your one head cannot beat a-million-students-a-year’s worth of trial and error and refinement—but your hand can.
Your use of scratch paper can set you up to approach a question that you might not otherwise know how to approach, it can protect against careless errors, it can have a remarkable effect on efficiency, and, best of all, it can relieve an enormous amount of the mental stress that occurs during testing.
Tip #1—You can separate all GRE questions into two categories. The first category is for questions that you are supposed to get right. These questions are in your scoring range; you know the math or the vocabulary. Not only can you get these questions right but it is critical to your score that you do so. The second category is for questions that you’re not supposed to get correct. They have been tested and proved to be hard; they have difficult vocabulary words and difficult math. Within this categorization, the techniques have two functions. The first is to ensure that the questions you are supposed to get right, you do get right. This is not to be dismissed lightly. Careless errors, especially in the first ten questions, will kill your score. Rushing through problems that seem easy will kill your score. The second function of the techniques is the use of Process of Elimination to ensure that any and all students will get correct a guaranteed percentage of even those questions that they are not supposed to get correct. Proper use of scratch paper ensures that techniques are happening and happening correctly.
Tip #2—On the Verbal section, the scratch paper has two primary functions. The first is to allow you to park your thinking on the page, to externalize it, to commit to it. If you are doing even an easy question in your head, you are really doing two jobs. The first is the work of solving the question. The second is the work of keeping track of which answer choices are still in and which ones are out. Not only is this mental multi-tasking extremely inefficient, it can also be quite stressful. Frankly, it’s twice the work. By parking your thinking on the page, you efficiently remove wrong answers from consideration, identify your potential answer choices, and move on. You create clarity and organization. Both things lead to less stress, less mental effort, and ultimately less mental fatigue. Students who are doing the work in their heads will spend 20 percent of their time per question just looking at the screen, keeping track of what is in, out, or a maybe.
Tip #3—On the Math section there are a number of question types that provoke very specific set-ups on your scratch paper. Once you see the question types, before you have even fully read the question, you make your set-ups and start filling in information. When you have done this, you are halfway into the question, you have organized your thinking and approach, and you have set yourself up to succeed on the problem. All that remains is to fill in the numbers. This is stress-free living on the GRE. It all starts with the scratch paper.
Tip #4—On the Verbal, use your scratch paper as a place to park your thinking. Quickly evaluate each answer choice with a simple check for one that could work, an X for one that will not, an M or horizontal squiggle for a maybe, and a question mark for one you do not know. Once you have evaluated each answer choice, select from the ones which remain and move on.
Tip #5—Learn the set-ups for each type of question. Keep your page organized with space on one side for the question set-up and the other side for calculations. Once you have completed a question, draw a horizontal line across the page and start the next one in a clean space. Do your work on the page. If you get off track you will be able to find out why and where.
Tip #6—On the Verbal, do not be afraid to use the “Maybe” sign. Before you spend ten minutes scratching your head and trying to assess a difficult answer choice, give it the maybe. It is entirely possible, if not likely, that you will either eliminate the other four answer choices or find a much stronger one. You can always spend more time on an answer choice IF you have to, but you never want to spend more time THAN you have to.
Text Completion—These used to be Sentence Completion, but now they’ve gotten longer, and you must work with each blank independently. Questions may have between one and five sentences and one to three blanks. A one-blank question will have five answer choices. A two- or three-blank question will have three choices per blank. You must select the correct word for each blank to get credit for the question.
Sentence Equivalence—These look like Sentence Completion questions but with one blank and six answer choices. You must select two answer choices from the six provided. The correct answers will each complete the sentence and keep the meaning the same.
Reading Comprehension—Reading Comp supplies you with a passage and then asks you questions about the information in the passage, the author’s intent, or the structure. There are three distinct question types that could occur here. They are:
Quantitative Comparison—Quant Comps, for short, give you information in two columns. Your job is to decide if the values in the two columns are the same, if one is larger, or if it is impossible to say. (Tip: If there are no variables in either column, eliminate answer choice D.)
Problem Solving—These are the typical five-answer, multiple-choice questions you probably remember from the SAT. You must correctly select one of the five answer choices to get credit. (Tip: They’ve given you the answers. One of them is correct. Use the answer choices to help answer the question.)
Select All That Apply—This is a new twist on the old multiple-choice question. In this case you may have three or up to eight answer choices, and one or more will be correct. You must select all of the correct answer choices to get credit. (Tip: The answer choices are generally in chronological order, so start in the middle and look to eliminate as many answer wrong choices as possible.)
Numeric Entry—Alas, these are not multiple choice. It is your job to come up with your own number and type it into the box provided. For fractions, you will be given two boxes and you must fill in the top and the bottom separately. (Tip: You don’t have to reduce your fractions. The computer reads 44/88 the same as ½, so save yourself a step.)
Yup, that’s right, the new GRE now provides an on-screen calculator. Like the calculator you might find on your computer, this one will add, subtract, multiply, divide, and find a square root. It also has a transfer number button that allows you to transfer the number on the calculator screen directly to the box on a Numeric Entry question. This button will be grayed out on a multiple-choice question.
Since we all use calculators in our daily life, it’s about time they provided one on the GRE. Certainly this should cut down on basic calculation errors and save a bit of time on questions that involve things like averages or percentages. The GRE, however, is not generally a test of your ability to do large calculations, nor is the calculator a replacement for your brain. The test makers will look for ways to test your analytic skills, often making the calculator an unnecessary temptation, or, at times, even a liability. Be particularly careful of questions that ask you to provide answers in a specific format. A question may ask you to provide an answer rounded to the nearest tenth, for example. If your calculator gives you an answer of 3.48, and you transfer that number, you will get the question wrong. Or a question may ask you for a percent and will have the percent symbol next to the answer box. In this case they are looking for a whole number. Depending upon how you solve the problem on your calculator, you may end up with an answer of .25 for 25%. If you enter the decimal, you will get the question wrong.
Here are a few tips for when to use and when not to use your calculator on the GRE:
In general, ETS is not interested in testing your ability to do lots of calculations. In fact, they’ve even experimented with giving students on-screen calculators. They like to think that they are testing how well you think rather than how well you can calculate. Therefore, if you find yourself doing lots of calculating on a particular question, you are probably off track. Oftentimes you can calculate your way to the correct answer if necessary, but usually there is a better way. Your success depends upon how quickly and readily you can spot the opportunities.
Algebra is one math concept that shows up all over the test. There are dozens of different ways to ask an algebra question, some more obvious than others. The sooner you recognize it as an algebra question and make the correct set-up on your scratch paper, the better. This will buy you more time for the occasional question where you do get hung up. That is where this book comes in. The first ten algebra questions may look hard. By the time you’ve seen 60, however, you begin to see them all variations on a theme. When you can do that, you’re ready.
In many ways, the math portion of the test is as much a test of reading as the verbal. Many of the math problems you will see start out as large blocks of text. When you see a large block of text, break it down into bite-sized pieces and solve the problem meticulously, one step at a time. Skipping or combining steps leads to trouble. Don’t be afraid to read the problem out loud to yourself or to use your pencil to follow along with the text on the screen as you’re reading. Reading too quickly leads to trouble, skipping words when you read (something all good readers do) leads to trouble, and careless errors will kill your score.
As a general rule, ballpark first and calculate second. Naturally you should end up ballparking more at then end of the section and calculating more at the beginning, but it’s a good rule of thumb. Ballparking can take many forms. The first benefit to Ballparking is that you can’t do it if you don’t understand the question. The basic process of trying to come up with a ballpark range for an answer involves arriving at a conceptual understanding of what the question is asking. If you are at the tail end of a section, you might stop here and pick an answer. If you are in your first ten, you might use this as a way of figuring out how to go about determining the actual answer.
Always, Ballparking is a valuable way to check your work. GRE questions tend to make sense. The correct answer to a question asking for the number of students in a class will not contain a fraction (ETS won’t generally chop a student in half). A question in which a person bicycles uphill one way and downhill on the way home, will not involve a distance greater than the distance a person could or would bike to work in a day. If you are asked for time, and you know that the round trip of 20 miles took two hours, then each leg would average 60 minutes. If you are looking for the downhill leg, any answer greater than 60 is wrong and any answer less than the amount of time an average person could reasonably bike ten miles is wrong. This is Ballparking. It won’t necessarily eliminate four out of five wrong answers (although it could), but it will eliminate a few—and it will tell you the answer you generated actually makes sense.