It has often been debated whether it is possible to actually study for the Graduate Record Examination (GRE), the standardized test that is required for admission to most English-speaking graduate programs.
While it behooves every prospective test taker to brush up on vocabulary words and mathematical formulas, the best way to prepare for the GRE is to integrate its very language into your day-to-day thinking. By understanding the GRE's structural goals, you can greatly increase your familiarity with the test as well as your chance for success. Here is a short list of concepts commonly associated with the GRE:
1. Educational Testing Service (ETS). This educational testing and scoring organization administers the GRE, carefully monitors associated scoring trends, and makes necessary regular updates to the test.
2. General Test vs. Subjects Test. Most graduate students only need to take the GRE General Test, but where subscores in a specific discipline are needed, the Subjects Test is offered in biochemistry, cell and molecular biology, chemistry, computer science, literature in English, mathematics, physics, and psychology.
3. Computer-adaptive scoring. The GRE is delivered in a unique format wherein new questions are programmed to increase or decrease in difficulty based on the student's answer to each previous question. Critics of the computer-adaptive method believe that GRE scores could be affected by a test taker's presumed ability to gauge his or her success during the exam. In this model, students may not go back to an answered question, and they will not be presented with a new question until the current one is answered.
4. Verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, and analytical writing. These are the three major components of the GRE General Test. The verbal reasoning portion requires the taker to analyze written materials and to present conclusions drawn from it. The student should also be able to recognize and organize the parts of a sentence and identify links between words and concepts. Arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and data-analysis skills are employed in the quantitative reasoning section, which requires test takers to solve problems in a quantitative construct. Finally, the analytical writing section requires students to compose an essay that exhibits a firm understanding of the English language and the ability to articulate complex ideas effectively.
5. Experimental section. As a way to continually refresh the GRE and guard it against error, ETS includes in the exam a special section containing possible future questions. This section does not count toward a student's score; however, it will be indiscernible from other scored test sections, and given the same time allotment, so that test takers are not permitted to skip this section.
by Hannah Roberts, staff writer
