GRE Exam! HELP!

[Charmed1]

Has anyone out there taken the GRE's? I'm scheduled to take mine in March and was wondering if anyone could give me tips or advice fro studying for the test.

[The Lone Reaper]

I'm taking mine in December hopefully, so ditto on the info request. Charmed, I don't know what your major is or anything, but it looks like the test'll be cake. I picked up the "GRE for Dummies" book and the prep book from Kaplin and so far they've been pretty informative. It looks like the most difficult part will be trick answers and weird question formats (some of the math questions in the Dummies book were really throwing me for a loop ... and I have a math minor!)

[Leonardo]

Barron's publishing sells a GRE preparation package. Supposedly it's the same quality as the rest of their products, which good to very good.

[Gargoyle]

I took mine last year and didn't take it very seriously. I ended up going on the luck strategy. Luck actually worked out alright, but I can't recommend that to anybody else :D

Best thing you can do is start studying the vocabulary a little bit every day from now until when you take it. There are a lot of resources for studying the vocab, some free on the internet, but the published books are probably better. I did much (much) worse on the verbal part than on the math part, but I had a better percentile score on the verbal because just about everybody sucks bigtime on it.

If you study the math study guide provided by ETS, you'll be as prepared as you can be for that part. The only thing that surprised me about the math section is the problems on the test integrated the concepts used throughout the study guide, rather than stepping you through different types of problems like the study guide does. Guess I should have expected that, but I didn't.

[shwaip]

an 800 on the math is in the 92nd percentile. It's all algebra and geometry.

Study lots of vocab. I had a fair amount of trouble on the verbal part of the test (but I'm an uncultured engineer).

There are two writing parts - analytical and persuasive. The analytical was really easy for me. You basically need to poke holes in their argument.

[Gargoyle]

I took mine last year and didn't take it very seriously...
I found photographic proof. The mere fact that I was spending my time snapping pictures 12 hours before the test instead of studying probably demonstrates that, let alone the tequila. :D

[GHoosdum]

I took the GMAT a few years ago before entering the MBA program. I followed the same formula that I usually do for standardized tests, which is to not really bother studying at all. I did a little more poorly on the GMAT than I usually do on standardized tests - I don't remember my actual scores, but it was right around the 70th percentile (I scored a 33 on the ACT and a 1420 on the SAT using the same non-studying strategy, both in the mid to high 90s percentiles at the time). My GMAT score was enough to get into UC, but not high enough for the top B-schools.

Because of my experience, and because the GRE and the GMAT are very similar tests, I'd recommend studying from one of the Kaplan or Barron's guides, or taking a GRE test prep course.