Chapter 2

Owning the GRE: Strategies for Success

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 determine your ability to excel in grad school by sizing you up in three areas:

Work ethic: How hard you’re willing and able to work to achieve an academic goal — in this case, performing well on the GRE — determines your work ethic. Grad schools consider this to be a measure of how hard you’ll work in their program.

Study skills: To do well on the GRE, you must master some basic study skills and be able to process and retain new information.

Test-taking ability: Your test-taking ability is your ability to perform well on a test under pressure, which is separate from your ability to answer the questions. Exams are an essential part of grad school, so you need to prove that you can take a test without folding under pressure.

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 firm 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 — how to proceed in the event that you don’t do so well the first time.

Making the Best Use of Your Time

As soon as you decide to take the GRE, the clock starts ticking. You have only so much time to study, so much time to practice, and so little time to answer each question. Squander your time, and you reduce your chances of success. The good news: If you manage your time well and make the necessary preparations, you can improve your chances of doing well on the test. The following sections show you how to optimize your study and practice time and answer test questions more efficiently.

Budgeting your time for studying

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 not on memorization, but rather 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:

Six to 12 weeks total preparation: Give yourself plenty of time to work through this book, take practice tests, and review areas where you need extra preparation. Six to eight weeks works well for most people, but more time is generally better. At 12 weeks, you can do extremely well, but after 12 weeks, most people get burned out or lose interest, and their skills start to get rusty.

Three to four weeks on this book: Working through this book takes about three weeks, not including the practice tests. The practice tests should each take 21⁄2 hours (no essays) or 31⁄2 hours (with essays), plus another hour or two to review the answer explanations.

One to three hours per day, five or six days per week: Pace yourself. I’ve seen too many students burn themselves out from trying to master the whole test in three days. Your brain needs time to process all this new information and be ready to absorb more.

If you have only a couple weeks to study, mark your weakest subject areas in the table of contents at the beginning of this book and work through those chapters or sections first. If you’re not sure about your weakest subject areas, take one of the practice tests in the book or on the CD to find out.

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.

Prioritize your study time and schedule daily sessions. Otherwise, other activities and responsibilities are likely to clutter your day to the point of pushing study time off your to-do list.

Budgeting your time for practicing

Just because you know a subject inside and out doesn’t mean you can ace a test on it. 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.

Your proficiency with the test itself is as important as your math and verbal skills for attaining a top GRE score. As you take the practice tests, don’t focus exclusively on errors you made in answering specific questions. Spend time evaluating test-taking mistakes. What kinds of mistakes do you make two hours into the exam? Do you still try as hard at the end as you do in the beginning? Do you misread the questions or make simple math mistakes? Do you fall for traps?

In addition to working the practice tests in this book, I recommend working the free ­computer-based practice tests that Educational Testing Services (ETS) provides at ­ www.ets.org. See Chapter 3 for details.

Beating the clock: Time management tips

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 ticks down to 0:00. You have the option of removing the clock from the screen, but I don’t recommend doing that. Instead, make the timer familiar and comfortable (or rather, less uncomfortable) by using a timer while doing homework and practice tests. Practicing with a timer is part of preparing for the test-taking experience.

The clock changes from hours:minutes to minutes:seconds during the last five minutes; this, of course, means hustle time.

Don’t obsess over giving each question a specific number of seconds, but 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 click Review, click the question you want to return to, and then click Go to Question. You can also mark a question for review so it’s flagged in the Review Screen. Just keep in mind that while you’re reviewing questions and answers, the clock continues to tick. (See Chapter 3 for more about the computerized test.)

No question carries greater weight than any other question; easier ones are worth just as much as harder ones. A good strategy is to make a note on your scratch paper of any question that you can’t answer quickly so that you can answer as many of the easy questions as possible and review the harder ones at the end.

Answer every question, even if you have to make a wild guess. Although you don’t earn points for incorrect answers, you don’t lose points, either; by guessing, at least you have a chance to earn the points. See Chapter 1 for details.

Repeating the Test

As I explain in Chapter 1, upon completion of the test, you have the option of accepting and seeing your scores immediately or cancelling the results if you’re convinced you did poorly. If you cancel the results, you have two choices: Retake the test or choose another career path. If you accept your scores and end up with subpar results, you have a third option — stick with what you got.

If you wonder whether you should repeat the test, ask yourself the following questions before making that decision:

Am I repeating the test to get a certain minimum qualifying score? If you have your heart set on a particular graduate school that requires a minimum GRE score, you may not need to take the test again and again until you get that score. Talk to the admissions folks at the school you want to attend. They weigh the GRE score along with your GPA, résumé, and personal interests and have some flexibility when making their decision; if your score is close to the target, they may just let you in. I see it happen all the time.

Am I willing to study twice as hard, or am I already burned out? If you put your heart and soul into studying for the exam the first time, you may be too burned out (or enervated) to take on another round of study and practice. After all, scores don’t magically go up by themselves; improvement requires effort.

What types of mistakes did I make on the first test? 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), you’re a good candidate for repeating the test. If you know what you did wrong, you can mend your ways and improve your score.

However, if you have no idea where you fell short or your mistakes were due to carelessness or a lack of concentration, you’re very likely to make those same types of mistakes again. If you truly, honestly, sincerely, and without dissembling (lying) feel that you can stay focused and avoid making the same mistakes, go for it! But chances are, if you’re the type of test-taker who always makes a lot of careless mistakes or rarely makes them, you’re not going to change your whole test-taking style overnight. This, by the way, is one purpose for taking and reviewing the practice tests.

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.

Were there extenuating (underestimated) circumstances beyond my control? Maybe your nerves were acting up on the first exam, you were feeling ill, or you didn’t get enough sleep the night before. In that case, by all means repeat the exam. You’re bound to feel better the next time. In addition, if the test was administered poorly or in a room full of distractions, you really should consider a retake. (See the section “Reporting Test Administration Abnormalities” for details.)

Did I choke? This happens all the time, especially on the essay questions at the beginning. Or you could panic on a thorny math question, spending several minutes and frazzling yourself for the rest of the test. Fortunately, recovering from this slip-up is easy. Almost every test-taker I’ve seen choke does phenomenally better on the next try.

Did I run out of steam? Stamina is a key factor of success on the four-hour GRE. If you don’t practice writing the essays when taking the practice tests, you won’t be prepared for the extra hour of work before the Math and Verbal sections. Also, because you’re amped on test day, you’re likely to run out of steam faster than usual. Knowing what to expect and preparing for it could boost your score on a retest.

Am I eligible to retake the GRE? You can take the GRE only once per 60-day period and no more than five times per rolling 12 months. If you try to take the test more often than that, you won’t be stopped from registering for or taking the test, but your scores won’t be reported.

Can repeating the exam hurt you? Typically, no. Most schools look only at 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 just a little bit. In general, if you’re willing to invest the study time and effort and take the repeat exam seriously, go for it.

All the scores you obtain for five years are part of your record and are sent to the schools you designate. You can’t send scores from only one exam date. For example, if you do great in October then take the exam again in April and blow it big time, you can’t tell ETS to ignore the April debacle (a sudden collapse, a rout) and send just the October scores.

Reporting Test Administration Abnormalities

Your test isn’t actually administered by ETS. Companies licensed by ETS administer the GRE in your area, and they’re required to adhere to certain standards. If something irregular occurred during the test that you believe reduced your score, call the ETS complaint line at 866-756-7346. You have seven days to register a complaint.

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.

Using Ancient Scores

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 five years ago or less, you’re in luck (assuming you scored well). The GRE folks make the scores 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 us right here and now. However, if you took the test more than five years ago, you have to take it again.

You can retake the test and perhaps improve your score, but until that score’s fifth birthday, it remains part of your GRE record.