Princeton Review - Cracking the GRE with 4 Practice Tests, 2015 Edition

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2015 Edition

v3.1

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

Thanks to Kyle Fox for thoroughly reviewing and revising every drill and test question in the book. This update could not have happened without you.

Thanks to John Fulmer, the National Content Director for the GRE, for your hard work, unending patience, and great humor during the overhaul of this book.

Dominique Walsh, Neill Seltzer, Peter Hanink, Scott Patterson, Catherine Connell, Ellen Mendlow, Rachel Warren, Briana Gordon, Mariwyn Curtin, Katie ONeill, Curtis Retherford, and the staff and students of The Princeton Review.

• Go to PrincetonReview.com
• Youll see a welcome page where you should register your book using the ISBN. Type in 9780804124683 and create a username and password so that next time you can log into www.PrincetonReview.com easily.
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• Take 2 full-length practice GRE exams
• Access a tally of any book typos or late-breaking updates

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

For a lot of people, taking a standardized test such as 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.

A few years back, the GRE was rather significantly revised. This new version of the 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.

Strategies Galore

In this book youll find The
Princeton Reviews trusted
test-taking strategies to
help you crack the GRE.

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:

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, you should cultivate several very important skills 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: