Get to Know the GRE

After high school, you may have though standardized tests were a thing of the past. If you plan to go to graduate school, however, you will find that you must now take the college version of the SAT to get into a good school. The GRE, or Graduate Record Examination, is the test that graduate schools will use to determine your worth to them as an academic candidate. To do your best on the exam, you should understand the basics of how it works.

First, unlike the SAT, wrong answers and blank answers count the same. They go against your score. On the SAT, you probably were told to leave questions blank if you did not have a reasonable expectation that you knew the answer. That worked for the test because only right answers counted. On the GRE, though, blanks are wrong, so eliminate as many answer choices as you can, even if it is only one, and then guess.

Second, you will be taking the GRE on a computer. Educational Testing Services (ETS), which administers the GRE, did away with the paper-based test a few years ago. That decision has pros and cons for college students taking the GRE. On the plus side, you can take the GRE practically any day of the week at a center close to you. Sylvan Learning Centers all host the exam as well as other educational centers in your area. Even if you are the only one taking the exam that day, you still get a spot with a proctor.

On the con side, the computer-based system is set up to alter to meet your testing abilities. If you begin answering the basic questions wrong, the computer system will give you easier questions and vice versa. The point of this self-correcting test is to judge exactly where your abilities are instead of basing your abilities on a generic exam model.

Another bonus of the computer-based system is that you can find out your scores that day! Do you remember waiting the six weeks for SAT results in high school? Well, now you will know immediately how you did. Although you will not have official scores for a while, you will know whether you have a competitive score or not. Some universities even accept the unofficial score to make a decision on your admission, pending the receipt of the official score.

Finally, you should know that the GRE is broken down into three sections. You will have a quantitative, or math, section. Rather than determining actual math ability, the quantitative section judges how much you understand mathematical reasoning and asks you to compare theoretical values using variables and formulae.

The verbal section will be most familiar to former SAT-takers. This portion of the exam has analogies, antonyms, and strict vocabulary questions. Boning up on root words, suffixes, and prefixes is the best way to do well. The last section is the analytical, or essay-writing, section. GRE examinees will have to complete two essays that prove the writer's ability to form coherent arguments and to use good grammar and style to make those arguments.