Recycled: GRE Thoughts, Part 2

Grad school is kicking my butt. So in an effort to keep this blog semi-active over the next few months, until I at least get my legs underneath me to start generating new content, I'll be recycling many of my old posts about the MFA application process. This information is a year old, but I think still very relevant for the upcoming 2009 application season. This post was put up on October 10, 2008, and is my second post on GREs, how they relate to MFA programs, some general thoughts, and preparation. Enjoy!

Welcome to my random thoughts on the GREs, part two. Part one can be found here. It occurred to me yesterday that I needed to give a little more background to where I'm coming from educationally to give a little bit more perspective on my scores. I graduated from college four years ago from Purdue with a degree in Genetics with a horrible 2.46 GPA. Suffice to say that I have never been a very hard worker. But I've always been a pretty good standardized tester. In the month leading up to my test on September 13, I first took a baseline practice test just to see how badly my verbal skills had declined in college and got a 500-550 score. Following that, I studied semi-regularly on the weekends, taking practice tests, memorizing words. When I was about a week out before the real thing, I went into "hardcore" mode and studied nonstop using the strategies I outlined in my GRE thoughts, part one. Additionally, I did some very light studying on the math and essay sections.

On to the various websites and resources, as promised in my previous post.

Barron's GRE Guide -- This was the first thing I bought in preparation for the test, and was my base resource. It's basically everything you'd expect from a GRE guidebook -- complete with five paper practice tests, one CAT test (on a CD), general study strategies, a "most frequent word" list (weighing in at 333 words), and a much more massive 3,500-word list. To be honest, I have no idea why the 3,500-word list was in there. Unless you buy this book a year to six months outside of the test, there's no way anyone would be able to reliably memorize all those words. And even then, it's not going to cover all the possible words you would potentially see on the test. Simply put, the best way to get that tasty 700+ GRE score is to be generally well read -- something that comes from decades of reading regularly. For the more realistic studier, the "most frequent word" list was by and far the most valuable thing in the book (and something that is in every respectable GRE guidebook -- Princeton, Kaplan, etc.). As I mentioned in my last post, I saw at least 7-10 words on test that were on the list, a larger portion than I would've expected. Memorize that list. At the end of it all, I took all the paper practice tests and the CAT test on the CD-Rom, and got scores consistently in the 600-650ish range. The CAT test I scored a 550.

MyGRETutor.com -- I stumbled on this website after I had exhausted all the practice tests that the Baron's guide had to offer. This site has hundreds of test questions (the first ten on each section are free) and one free CAT. There are also four other tests that can be unlocked, as well as the other test questions, for $5. The cheap price of the tests should've been a warning sign, but I didn't do my research and promptly paid to access the rest of the tests. In short, this site is horrible. The practice questions are inexact, vague, and confusing. While I'd never hold the GREs up on a pedestal as paragons of testing standards -- you can always count on their questions as at least definite. It's a very bad sign when you read through the answers of a test and find yourself saying "really?" over and over again. Even worse, there were at least a few grammatical errors on the reading comprehension sections of their tests. So yeah. Not very reputable. To give you an idea of how accurate their internal CAT scoring was, I scored on the five tests as high as 710 and as low as 540.

800score.com -- Frustrated by MyGRETutor.com, I continued to search online for a resource of reputable (and accurate) CATs to practice, and found this site. They're a pure test site, and offer five CATs to download for $20. I did a little bit of research, sampled a little bit of their free test, and went ahead and paid for their product. Much much better. The questions were better worded, more precise, and, most importantly, had answers that did not leave me scratching my head. My test score range was 540 to 600, a much tighter band of numbers, which is indicative of a more accurate test.

The ETS website -- ETS provides two free CATs for download from their website, both of which I scored 630 on. They can be found here. There's not too much to say, except that these tests come straight from the horse's mouth, and (unsurprisingly) yielded the scores that were most similar to my eventual score. A definite download, since they are free (though not really, since you pay through the nose to just take the test, never mind the $20 fee you pay per school to send the test!) and since they will be most representative of the GRE test you'll be taking.

Notice the wide range of scores that I got on each of the CATs above:

Barron's: 550-650
MyGRETutor.com: 540-710
800score.com: 540-600
ETS website: 630

The lesson? The GRE's computer adaptive tests are notoriously difficult to emulate without the exact scoring system utilized by the ETS and without the amount of data that the ETS has at their fingertips. My actual score was 650, which was a bit higher than I expected, but one that makes sense in retrospect. It was the score that was closest to the practice tests provided by the ETS. You'd almost expect the other resources to want to underscore people -- which I believe they do -- because it simply makes sense as a business practice; lower expectations are much easier to deal with than higher ones. So what do we take from this? Find and take as many tests as you can afford. But do your research, and stay away from the poor websites. Interpret your scores with a large grain of salt. And most importantly, have faith in your abilities!