GRE

I have to take the GRE and was wondering how bad it was. Anyone take it here? I'm going to do a prep course if I can find one.

I took the GRE but it was in the early 1990's (yikes!). It was a paper/pencil test then. It was a tough test. I am not a math person so that was my biggest struggle. I didn't take a prep course but looking back, I should have! My score was good enough to get into grad school and that was all that mattered to me.

Best wishes to you. Maybe someone here will have taken it more recent that me and have some up-to-date pointers.

Do some prep for it. I also took it way back when, but it's a challenge. I did prep before I took it and did fine, but I am very glad I took the time to prepare.

I took the GRE in 2010. It was fairly similar to the SATs, except I found the verbal section to be more advanced. It has been revised once since I took the exam. When I took the exam, the verbal was focused on vocabulary, but now it has more emphasis on reading comprehension.

Studying and practice tests are definitely very useful. I improved my score a lot by going through a practice book. Most of the material isn't extremely difficult - but I hadn't thought about a lot of it since high school. Best wishes .

I'm thinking of taking it too.

i took it on heroin and surprisingly, didnt do all that bad... depends on what you are already good at. the vocab, for me, seemed threatening, but was actually not that bad. math looked easier than it was...

i wouldnt take a course. just get a workbook and take practice tests.

i assume you mean the general and not the subject?

I went to a university that did not require the GREs; I'd do that, take a few courses and then transfer instead. I did okay on the GREs though, enough to have gotten in but undergrad GPA counts more often (I just went to my undergrad university for graduate school so just graduating was enough there, too :-)

I'm planning to take the GRE this year. I'm using all online and physical workbooks that I could find from my library to study. Will see how I well I do on the test in OCT!

I'll be taking the Psychology subject one in October and the general in November. I'll have about a month to study for each one. I've heard that's not a lot of time, but still doable.

Seems like more than enough time to me... depends on how good you are at tests, I suppose...

the vocab section looks a lot worse than it is... i thought i would totally screw it up but it was my best section... i actually did quite well, surprisingly.

thank you all for the encouragement... I'm thinking about taking the test and this post group helped me to just get down to business and start to study those books...

I'm really nervous about this. I was planning on going to a grad school that doesn't require the GRE for my program (Literature). I don't know, now. I'm not sure I even have time to prepare. I also can't really afford it. I might do what Perna suggested - transfer out of that program if it turns out it isn't to my liking. Plus, it's only for an MA, so I could always do a PhD program afterward if I decide that's what I want.

You aren't sure about grad school or the gre?

If you screw up the test you can retake it and only have the new score count... Also, if you don't like your test result you don't have to show it to anyone... I would take the test. You might surprise yourself. Not worth switching programs over... The test really isn't as hard as it sounds.

I'm taking it in about a month and I'm worried because I don't really have time to study around all of my actual schoolwork. However, the test creators have some online software that is apparently very useful (and FREE) in helping prep for the test, so I'm gonna start using that every time I can.

My friend and I took it last August and we got around the same percentile scores as we did the SAT. Neither of us practiced for very long (1-2 months).

I was pretty satisfied at the time, but now seeing the profiles of other people in my grad field, I wish I studied just a bit harder. It's not really all that bad though.

The GRE Subject test, though, is a different story.