gre - december 6th

well it's all set to go. i'm taking the gre on thursday december 6th at 1pm. even after all of the hours i have spent studying these last couple months, i still feel so unprepared. i've been putting in 3-5 hours almost every day and i'm starting to believe that i'm getting stupider as i go.

for those of you who have no idea what the gre is, it's the graduate record examination - the equivalent of the lsat or gmat for graduate schools. it is a timed exam composed of three sections: a verbal, quantitative, and writing.

there are four types of questions in the verbal section.

1. antonym - a word is given and you are required to pick it's antonym

ex.

*pathogenic
-diaphanous
-trenchant
-venerable
-salubrious
-sanguine

2. analogy - a pair of word is given and you are required to pick which pair of words shares the same relationship

ex.

*intransigent : flexibility
-transient : mobility
-disinterested : partisanship
-dissimilar : variation
-progressive : transition
-ineluctable :modality

3. sentence completion - the basic fill in the blank

4. reading comprehension - you read a few paragraphs and answer the questions


the quantitative section is composed of math and graph analysis questions that take on two forms.

1. multiple choice

ex.

*if the average of two numbers is 3y and one of the numbers is y - z, what is the other number, in terms of y and z?
-y + z
-3y + z
-4y + z
-5y - z
-5y + z

2. comparison - two choices are given. you must decide which is a higher value, if they are equal, or if it cannot be determined with the information given.

ex.

*q, r, and s are positive integers; qrs > 12
-qr/5
-3/s

finally, the writing section is composed of two sections - analysis and argumentation

1. analysis - a short reading with an argument is given. you must write a few paragraphs showing what is wrong with the argument and how it could have been better made.

2 argumentation - a short topic is presented and you must free-write an argument concerning it.