Beginning to Review for the GRE

I have previously complained that the GRE was not being revised for testing this year, but now that I have spent some time with my Kaplan review guide, I am not quite as upset about this as I was.

I have now read the "strategies and practice" sections and worked the problems for the quantitative (math) and verbal sections of the exam, and I feel I have a better handle on what the test will involve. I still find the idea of the computer-adaptive element kind of nerve-wracking, but at least the question types like quantitative comparison and analogy are less weird-seeming.

Aside from familiarizing the student with the test, making the student comfortable with the kinds of questions on the test, and giving the student practice questions and exams to work on, the primary thing the book attempts to do is give students a methodological approach to the problems (aka tips and tricks to get the answers the exam writers were looking for). My attitude toward this has varied from skeptical to disparaging in the past, but I admit that having read this stuff, I can see its value.

I found that the discussion of the analogy questions in particular was very useful. Historically, I have used my typical intuitive approach to answering these questions, and that has worked pretty well for me, but it's nice to be able to confirm to myself that my answer is correct, or have a place to start working toward an answer if nothing jumps out at me, by using their explicit method.

This approach involves finding the "bridge" that links the two parts of the beginning of the analogy (e.g. LUCID:OBSCURITY) at the correct level of specificity so that you can determine which of the answers have the same relationship. In this case, the bridge would be "lacks" because something that is LUCID "lacks" OBSCURITY. The correct answer would be ECONOMICAL:EXTRAVAGANCE. Perhaps this seems entirely obvious to you, my dear readers, but actually being told the mechanics of how these analogies work did de-mystify them for me.

I liked that they warned us of specific analogy traps that the test writers like to set for us (e.g. the Cliche Trap - putting together two words like "faithful" and "servant" that go together in the English language but that do not have a logical relationship). They also gave us an extremely nice bit of advice for when we can't figure out the answer: eliminate all answer choices that share the same bridge. For example, if you have the options of PLIANT:YIELD and IRKSOME:ANNOY, both of these have the same "bridge" so neither answer can be correct; eliminate them and choose from what remains.

My worst question type in the Verbal section was reading comprehension, especially for passages that involve hard science topics (I mean astronomy, chemistry, etc., not science topics that were difficult). I don't think this is because of any weird testing artefact, either, but fairly appropriately reflects that my weakest area is understanding science material well enough to answer (moderately difficult) questions about the implications of the passage, etc., under time pressure. I've always been relatively bad at science so this doesn't surprise me. (On every standardized test from early childhood, science has been my Achilles heel. The science section of the ACT blew my 36 score.) I can continue working on this area, but have to acknowledge that it's a legitimate problem (with, in my view, little obvious impact on my ability to excel at graduate studies in the behavioral sciences, of course) and accept that my score will suffer for it.

I have determined that my vocabulary basically already kicks ass, but will shore up my weaknesses in things like "not being able to consistently remember what the word 'prodigal' means because I know that people misuse the term a lot but I can't remember which of the two common uses that relate to the Bible story is the right one." (Note to self: he was the prodigal son because he spent all his money, not because he came back.)

I did surprisingly well on the practice Quantitative section, missing 4 of 60 questions. Considering that I had done no review of geometry and such before sitting down with the test, that was a good performance for me (especially since two of the missed questions were at the very end, when I was trying to finish up the last several before talking to Robert, who'd just gotten home - my concentration was shit at that point).

I have yet to spend any time looking at the Writing section of the test, which I have never encountered before.

Although you would expect the writers to believe/say this even if it is not true, I believe them when they posit that the GRE is not really a test of one's verbal and mathematical abilities. (I mean, really - math studliness cannot be measured by a multiple choice test that does not venture past 9th grade geometry and focuses only on getting the "right" answer by hook or by crook without making you demonstrate how you got it.) Nor is it a measure of one's intelligence or moral worth or any other grandiose thing. It's just a standardized test. It gives admission committees some kind of common "objective" yardstick to use across various applicants to their programs, since grades and recommendations have to be viewed in terms of the school the student attended and admission essays are evaluated in such a subjective fashion.

Ultimately, it is not clear to me that the GRE even has predictive validity, at least for psychology graduate students. My knowledge of this research is ten years out of date, but at that time, my understanding was that GRE Quantitative and Verbal scores do not predict success in graduate school for psychology students, although that may be a restriction of range issue - at the very least, for people who scored well enough to be accepted into the programs, getting a good versus extremely good score does not make a difference in predicting your grades, whether you complete the graduate program, your prof's rating of your dissertation or thesis, etc. (Needless to say, even "for science," psychology programs seem uninterested in performing genuine experiments in this field by, e.g., bringing in people across the entire range of sucky to awesome GRE scores and seeing if they perform at different levels.) The GRE Analytic section (which, ironically, has been abandoned) did have some predictive power for some groups of graduate students - I believe for men, but not for women.

Of course, if I end up with a 1580 or something crazy high like that on my exam, that will be further evidence that I am a GENIUS!