Friday, November 23, 2007

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.

6 comments:

  1. Holy crap do I like the math section a ton better. I never *truly* realized how much of a geek I am until this moment... maybe. (Do you have the answers? I don't even want to take a stab at the vocab, but for the math ones, I'd say 5y-z and 3/s is larger. How'd I do?)

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  2. The GRE sounds terrible (not that the LSAT was particularly fun). But best of luck!

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  3. I feel for you man. I am so glad that I have all my tests behind me. I agree w/ kel, the math would be my favorite, the rest looks like French, and I no parle frances.

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  4. Good luck with those tests Loyd. I will be pulling for you. I have a feeling that you will do just fine. Stay calm and stay focused.

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  5. I took the GRE and never ended up in grad school (still thinking about it; I wonder how long my test results are good for). Anyway, the test was hard, but it wasn't as grueling as I expected. If you're still in "college mode" it shouldn't be too big of a problem. The one thing I didn't like was that it repeated questions on me a couple of times. I figured that it meant that I missed it the first time, but it was quite annoying.

    btw, I was an English major and the verbal part still kicked my ass a little. Sheesh!

    Good luck!

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  6. good luck. You'll do well, in fact your scores I'm sure will be impressive. your sis

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