Chapter 2

Owning the GRE: Strategies for Success

IN THIS CHAPTER

Bullet Managing your time before and during the test

Bullet Deciding whether to retake the GRE

Bullet Taking action if the test isn’t administered properly

Bullet Using scores up to five years old

The GRE isn’t an IQ test. Nor is it a measure of your worth as a human being or a predictor of your ultimate success in life. The GRE is designed to assess your ability to excel in grad school by sizing you up in three areas:

  • Work ethic: How hard you’re willing and able to work to achieve an elusive academic goal — in this case, performing well on the GRE — reflects (to them) your work ethic. Graduate schools consider this to be a measure of how hard you’ll work in their programs.
  • Study skills: To do well on the GRE, you must master some basic study skills and be able to process and retain new information.
  • Test-taking ability: This is your ability to perform well on a test, under pressure, which is a separate ability from being able to answer the questions. Exams are an essential part of grad school, so you need to prove that you can take a test without ...

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