Princeton Review - Cracking the New GRE, 2012 Edition

The following people deserve thanks for their help with this book:

Thanks to Ellen Mendlow, Rachel Warren, Briana Gordon, Mariwyn Curtin, Katie ONeill, Neill Seltzer, Curtis Retherford, and the staff and students of The Princeton Review.

Special thanks to Adam Robinson, who conceived of and perfected the Joe Bloggs approach to standardized tests and many of the other successful techniques used by The Princeton Review.

Theres more to this book than just this book. Our new edition of Cracking the New GRE includes exclusive access to the following online tools designed to enhance your studies:

• 2 full-length practice tests with detailed performance analysis available on completion
• In-depth information on graduate schools and assistance with your application process
• Optional essay scoring with our exclusive LiveGraderSM service

To access your online tools, go to PrincetonReview.com/cracking.

In order to access our online tools, go to . Next you will see a Sign Up/Sign In page where you will type in your e-mail address (username) and choose a password. After you receive confirmation of your registration, follow the directions to reach the site and be sure to do the following:

• Take Full-Length Practice TestsBy working through a full-length test early on, youll be able to identify your strengths and weaknesses and better focus your studies. As you get closer to test day, taking simulated tests will help you practice techniques, build your stamina and confidence, and gain familiarity with the kinds of questions youre going to see.
• Research SchoolsVisit our Grad Schools and Careers website, where youll find a wealth of information about schools that match your specific criteria. You can also use the site to manage your application process and even submit applications directly to schools!
• Link OutClick through helpful links for more information about the GRE.

What is the GRE? Who makes the test? Whats a good score? Whats with this new GRE? The answer to these questions and many others lie within in this chapter. In the next few pages, well give you the lowdown on the things you need to know about the new GRE.

For a lot of people, taking a standardized test like the GRE usually engenders a number of emotionsnone of them positive. But heres the good news: The Princeton Review is going to make this whole ordeal a lot easier for you. Well give you the information you will need to do well on the GRE, including our time-tested strategies and techniques.

The GRE has just been rather significantly revised. The new test supposedly allows graduate schools to get a better sense of an applicants ability to work in a post-graduate settinga goal that is unrealistic indeed, considering that the people who take the GRE are applying to programs as diverse as physics and anthropology.

However, its safe to say that neither GREnew or oldis a realistic measure of how well youll do in grad school, or even how intelligent you are. In fact, the GRE provides a valid assessment of only one thing:

The GRE assesses how well you take the GRE.

Got it? Even so, you still want to do well on the GRE, because you still want grad schools to take you seriously when they consider your application. With this in mind, there are several very important skills to cultivate when youre preparing for the test, and each of them is attainable with the right guidance (which well give you), a strong work ethic (which you must provide), and a healthy dose of optimism. Who knows? Maybe after working through this book and learning how to crack the test, youll actually look forward to taking the GRE.

So what exactly is this test youve heard so much about?

The Graduate Record Examination (GRE) is a 3-hour, 40-minute exam thats used to rank applicants for graduate schools. The scored portion of the new GRE consists of the following sections:

• One 30-minute Analysis of an Issue essay
• One 30-minute Analysis of an Argument essay
• Two 30-minute Verbal Reasoning sections
• Two 35-minute Quantitative Reasoning sections

The Verbal Reasoning sections test your skills on three different types of questions:

• Text Completion
• Sentence Equivalence
• Reading Comprehension

The Quantitative Reasoning sections measure your prowess in four areas:

• Basic Math
• Algebra
• Geometry
• Data Analysis

The GRE has been around in one form or another for decades, and this newest version represents the latest set of improvements on the test. The following are the most significant differences between the current GRE and the former GRE:

• The old GRE was adaptive by question, which means that your performance on one question influenced the selection of the next one, and you couldnt skip or go back to questions. The new GRE is adaptive by section. This means that the difficulty of the second section depends upon your performance on the first, but you can jump around within a section.
• The new test is longer; while the old test was 2 hours and 30 minutes long, as we previously mentioned, the new test is a bloated 3 hours and 40 minutesand thats without any introductory modules or an experimental section.
• You get to use an on-screen calculator on the GRE now!
• There are a bunch of new question types, including multiple-choice questions, multiple-choice questions with more than one answer, fill-in-the-blank questions, select-in-passage questions, and other strange-looking questions.
• The new test has a new scoring system; the old test was graded on the same 200800 scale as the SAT, but the new test is graded on a 130170 scale.