GRE

From The Unofficial Guide to Engineering

GREs are not as important as SATs were when you applied for undergraduate colleges, so try not to stress out.

For your reference: www.gre.org You can find test centers and register for the GRE at www.gre.org . You can pretty much take the exams whenever so long as universities will receive your scores before the deadline. After you take the exam, you will receive in the mail a score report on which you can list the schools you wish to send your scores to. You can also find the score report online at www.gre.org . You can also send your scores to schools by phone for an additional fee. Call 1 888-GRE-SCORE from the US.

You can now take the GRE exams on computer. You visit a test center, take the exam in about 3 hours and get your verbal and quantitative score right after the exam. The analytical score will be mailed to you a few weeks after the test date. You can cancel your scores prior to seeing them.

The computer-based exam is a little different than the paper exam, which may affect your test-taking abilities. You cannot return to a question after you have answered it. The computer-based exam tries to refine your score by asking simple questions at the beginning of the section and asking harder or easier questions depending on the correctness of your previous answers. You will want to pay extra attention to the first few questions as they will determine the next questions you will get.

The sections are as follows: analytical writing - 1 issue task 45 min 1 argument task 30 min verbal 30 questions 30 min quantitative 28 questions 45 min There is also a random experimental section of which the answers will not count toward your score.

The math section is similar to the SAT math section, but the verbal section is quite a bit harder than the SAT verbal section.

For the issue task, you will be presented with 2 essay topics of which you will choose one to write on. The issue task will ask you to discuss your perspective on the issue using examples to support your views. The argument task will present one topic only. You will be given a statement, and you will need to discuss how well reasoned the statement is. The list of prompts for both the issue task and the argument task are online here: http://www.gre.org/issuetop.html and http://www.gre.org/argutop.html

You might want to take a few practice tests. There are quite a few study aids for sale, even a few with a practice computer exam.

Relax and good luck!

Links

http://www.gre.org/pracmats.html: Free practice material

http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~wwu/downloads/wordlist.xls: free GRE vocabulary list