Introductory Remarks (any questions about this grad students perspective email Cathy LaBrish at labric@yorku.ca
 I don’t want to in any way mislead you.
 The “rules” for the GRE change.
 I wrote the GRE Psychology in 2006. And the GRE General in November of 2007.
 So, it is imperative that you consult the latest GRE Preparation Guides and the GRE website and pay close
attention to what the current rules are.
During the test:
 Writing either the General or the Psychology GRE is boring, boring, BORING..
 And you really, outside of allotted break periods, can’t afford the time to gaze off into space.
 This is especially true for the GRE General.
Big Tip:
 Practice, practice and practice writing practice tests under circumstances similar to that under which you
will be writing the GRE.
Practicing to write the GRE General:
 Get the practice disks
 Set up the computer
 And write the practice test just as if you were doing the real thing.
 Try to do this at least two times.
 Make sure you do this for all sections, Verbal, Quantitative, Analytical.
 One very important reason for doing this:
o The GRE General is a computer based test.
o You must complete a question before going to the next one.
o So, the typical multiple-guess strategy, that you can use with paper based tests, where you can first
go through and answer the questions you know the answers to or find easy, will not work.
Practicing to write the GRE-Psychology:
 Set two hours aside
 Then write one of the practice tests that you have not done before as if you were actually writing the GREPsychology.
Studying for the GRE-General:
 Vocabulary (do you really need to know all those lists of words the study guides suggest you know):
YUPPPPP!!!!
 In fact, roughly 2/3 of the verbal questions you will get are vocabulary related.
 These are: analogies and antonym questions.
 So knowing a lot of words (and especially the obscure ones) really affects your score.
 So, study all the lists from all the GRE Prep books you can find.
 Princeton review is pretty comprehensive, but consider looking at some of the other ones and buy copies of
these as well.
 I started about 2 months in advance.
 I took all the lists and first identified the words I knew.
 Be careful though. Many words have many different meanings, so make sure that you know the definition
that the GRE books supply.
 Then, I studied up to 25 words a day.
 I took the GRE books with me everywhere.
 At the end of each day, I then went through and checked off which words I felt I had a good command of.
 About two weeks before the GRE, I then went through the whole list again and identified the words I was
still having trouble with.
 I then focused the rest of my study time on these.
Getting used to doing the GRE-verbal questions:
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Get all the sample questions you can get your hands on and do them all.
Make notes of where you have trouble.
Focus your time there.
The Princeton Review has really great suggestions for how to handle all the questions on the
vocabulary/reading section.
Review these suggestions closely and pay attention to them.
They work.
Analytical writing:
 I used Princeton Review and reviewed closely their suggestions. Again, they work.
 I have severe writer’s block, so this section was the most difficult for me.
 When you get the questions, first identify which type of question it is:
 Then, write down a brief outline of all the points you intend to make.
 While Princeton Review says a great score is about length, I did not write very long responses (maybe 500
words at best).
 I put my time in writing a good introductory paragraph and then writing up my supporting points, one per
paragraph, with strong lead in topic sentences and a sentence summarizing the point I was making at the
end of each paragraph.
 I also put my time into writing a conclusion that basically restated my argument, as laid out in the opening
paragraph, and then summarizing my supporting points as laid out in each of my other paragraphs, showing
how each backed up my argument (very briefly).
 In my experience, it was organization and a well-constructed argument with good back up points that were
well explained that worked.
Quantitative section:
 Get all the sample questions you can.
 Go through a few sample tests and score yourself.
 Identify where you are having problems.
 Focus your study efforts on these problems.
 Be really careful with the questions where you need to select one of the following options
A
A is greater than B
B
B is greater than A
C
A equals B
D
There is insufficient information to determine …
For example:
You’ll be given the following information:
X=2
Y=4
Then asked to compare A and B.
In this example, you will see
A
B
2X
Y
Ok. So solve A, which is equal to 4, B which is equal to Y.
You then select C.
They can get really tricky.
Now you get:
X>2
Y>4
A
B
2X
Y
 Ok. So, sort of looks like the answer to the previous question.
 But it’s not.
 The correct answer is D.
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Why?
Well, now you are only told that X is greater than 2 and Y is greater than 4, but not the exact value
of X and Y. So, as X is greater than 2, it can be any value greater than 2 (eg. 3, 4, 5, etc, etc). Y is
greater than 4, so it could be 5, 6, 7. The issue is, because you now have to deal with greater than
signs, you are working with a range of values. You don’t have enough information to make the
comparison and therefore must select D.
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When you are sure that A is greater than B or B is greater than A, be really careful to select the
right answer.
Please avoid selecting A when you mean B or B when you mean A. That’s losing valuable points
for no good reason.
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Computer Adaptive Testing and the GRE General:
 Again, read the Princeton Review. Their description on how the GRE General works is great.
 Unlike paper based tests, no one will get the same questions for the GRE General.
 What happens is you answer the first question.
 Based on whether you get it right, you get an easier or harder question.
 Getting progressively harder questions gets you a higher score.
 So, it is really important to be accurate on the first 10 or so questions in each section.
 Unlike the paper based tests, there is no penalty for guessing.
 So, on later questions, if you are running out of time, make absolutely sure you answer all the questions,
making educated guesses where possible, otherwise do it randomly.
 Get all the questions answered.
 Don’t try to determine for yourself whether or not a question is hard or not.
 What seems easy to you, may be hard as far as the GRE people are concerned.
 Don’t waste time and worse yet panic about whether the questions you are getting are hard or not.
Studying for the GRE psychology:
 Princeton review is ok. But get other books
 Read the review sections.
 Then do a few practice tests and score yourself.
 Again, focus your attention on the areas you are weak on.
Writing the GRE-Psychology:
 This is paper based, and you can go back to questions and review your answers.
 There are around 200 questions and you have 2 hours.
 Time management is critical.
 When they tell you to take educated guesses, do so.
 If you can eliminate at least 2 of the possibilities, but aren’t sure guess.
 You do lose a quarter point if you are wrong.
 But you can also gain big time if you are right.
 I used the following methodology:
o I went through each question and answered those that I was sure of and recorded my answer on the
scantron sheet.
o Then placed a tick beside the question.
o If I could not immediately identify the correct answer, I crossed out which ones I was sure was
wrong.
o For ones, I had no idea of, I placed an X beside the question.
o Once I had done this for all questions, I then went back and reviewed the questions for which I
could eliminate possible answers.
 The mistake I made, was not to guess on these. If I had, I would have gone from 80 th to at least 90th
percentile.
 So, guess strategically.
 Oh, yeah, what about the questions I had no clue about. I ignored those completely.
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If time had permitted, I would have gone back and then seen if I could dredge up something that I use to
guess strategically, but I ran out of time. I went through and answered first all questions I was sure of.
For further questions about this grad students perspective email Cathy LaBrish at labric@yorku.ca