Take it from an award-winning, perfect 4.0 student; a statistics teaching assistant (after earning a 103% in the class), and not just the top score on ALL exams in my calculus class and top final grade, but the top in two entire calculus classes combined. I am receiving the highest honors at graduation – I even get to sit on stage with the “distinguished guests.” I tutor community college students in College Algebra. So, when you mention “now-evaporated, fundamental math skills,” you clearly speak from one who profits as a GRE tutor. The GRE quantitative section is akin to a foreign language. It is a racket, and these scores do not even remotely reflect one’s potential success in graduate school. Clearly, this test is designed to make it essential for students to pay $185 over and over again – or to pay tutors, such as yourself, to teach topics never addressed in school. What is the units digit of 18 to the 47th power? Should we not cave into expensive tutoring and pay to take the test multiple times, none of us could answer this question (in less than 1 minute 30 seconds based upon past schooling). Racket.

The GRE Biology subject test may very well not be much harder than the SAT2 biology subject test but the GRE Physics subject test covers questions from all areas of undergraduate coursework. It contains more questions than the average well-qualified physics undergraduate can handle; I have studied for it myself and I found many questions way too hard to answer all of them in the timeframe.

The GRE is good for measuring one thing other than how well one takes tests, and it is the ability of the test-taker’s nerves not to crack under pressure. That said, East Asian students (namely Indian, Chinese, Korean as well as Japanese students, and perhaps some from other East Asian countries to a lesser extent) typically score high on the GRE while being more likely to flounder in graduate school than students from other countries, presumably since they are practically trained since birth to ace standardized tests.

Case in point: the physics department at Vanderbilt (when Rob Knop worked there). Vanderbilt’s admissions committee separated the applications in three piles then: the locals, the Chinese and everyone else. The Chinese mostly came with high PGRE and GGRE scores, yet there were huge discrepancies between their GRE scores and what they actually achieved.

Hi Brandon, I know this is kind of an old thread but would appreciate it if you could give me any suggestions on books, materials, etc. I know the format has changed to the ‘adaptability’ of the test taker with the computer and was wondering if coaching is actually beneficial for the GRE. I am not a great standardized test-taker. I like to analyze and take my own time with problem solving. Do you think it is worth investing in Princeton Review or Kaplan coaching sessions? Which of the two would you recommend?

Thanks,
Zen

The verbal part of the new GRE is even worse where by in the part of completing some blanks in a text, one can end up earning no credit because he answered two blanks correctly and failed one. Further more some questions can have two possible answers and the idea of the best is too subjective.

The exam is also unfair for people coming from other education systems that rarely use multiple choice questions…especially the common wealth. The last time i did multiple choice questions was more than 20 years while in primary school.

The second major problem with the GRE is that rather than score, a applicant’s percentile placement is often looked at. Because the test is HIGHLY rigid in format and EXTREMELY coachable, particularly on the quantitative side, there is s significant advantage to those test takers who have the resources to pay for tutoring.

I’d guess (and might bet a small sum) this is the reason graduate schools still use the GRE. It’s in their interests to predict student performance as best as they can, and to junk indicators that don’t mean much. (Note, for instance, the disappearance of the GRE History exam, which was little but random trivia.)

You evaluation of the test, too, would be more convincing if you gave weight to an additional tutoring company. Princeton Review was founded in opposition to “buckle-down-and-learn-your-math-concepts” Kaplan, and champions a “these tests are crap — we’ll show you how to crack ’em without making you smarter!” mentality. Such a perspective certainly captures a piece of the truth, but not the entire thing. “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in Princeton’s Review’s educational philosophy.”

I make no claims, though, to objectivity: I’m an independent GRE tutor. For anyone taking the test, I recommend he/she considers it an opportunity to re-master the (now-evaporated) fundamental math skills, radically expand vocabulary, and improve in analytical reading. If anyone’s interested, I’m happy to give book suggestions!

For those of us having studied overseas and wanting to enter US graduate programs etc., the GRE is much more reliable than GPAs! Basically because in most countries and universities outside of the US it’s nearly impossible to find anyone with a GPA above 3. In Spain having a GPA of 2 is considered a decent grade! Grading is much tougher over here in Europe. The only exam you’re likely to get 100% on is a multiple choice, and that isn’t at all easy! Anything written will almost never get you a perfect grade because there’s almost always something you could have written more…