Deciding on When To Take The GRE

[TheLastStone]

Hey y'all!

 

I hope everyone has had a good weekend so far! I've been thinking of when the best time for me to take the GRE would be. For those that have seen my spreadsheet, for my last 1.5 yrs of school I am going to be focusing on school anywhere between 12-15 credits every semester, including the summer. And after that I intend to go back to my EMS agency to get my PC hours. I have been thinking since I've pretty much cleared this summer open, and I've looked over some GRE stuff and it all looks familiar, I'd just have to go back over it. I made it all the way to calc 3, so i feel confident I can get my algebra skills to where they need to be, and I've been going over some vocab resources, and I'm thinking of going to the ETS website and taking their practice tests. I found a test date right by my university on August 3rd. That gaves me about 2.5 months to study for the GRE, and I'll be ready to apply for all of my schools by spring 2020 because I'll have all of my hours and everything done, so the test is still within the 5 year mark. These are the schools I plan to apply to since I'm staying in NC for family reasons:

School                    App Deadline
Duke                       Oct 1
UNC                        Aug 1
Wake                       Sep 1
ECU                         Sep 1
Wingate                   Jan 15
Methodist                Jan 15
Elon                          Nov 7
Gard-Webb              Sep 1



So, 2.5 months to study for this thing with 1.5 year of school to go, and another year before I apply. Thoughts? Should I do it now since I have the free time to commit to studying for it?

[LadyNichiavelli]

Yes, now is the perfect time. Definitely do it now that you have the time (and 2.5 months is plenty of time for the GRE). And then if your scores aren't that great (at least being in the 50 percentile in each section), you'll be able to allocate more time to study for it down the road before you submit your apps. But since you're totally free now, do your very best this time around so that you'll have one thing knocked down. Good luck!

[MT2PA]

I took mine in 2013 before I even knew I would be applying to PA school.  Ended up applying in the 2014 season.  Take it now if you have the time.  There's no value in taking it closer to your app date as long as you're in the 5 year window.

[TheLastStone]

Thanks y'all! I'm gonna register to take it on August 3rd. That's the one that the furthest out before my fall semester starts and it's right by my university, so that's convenient. I register on the ETS website, right?

[runforhotdogs]

You know I spent about 3 weeks on GRE and took it. I probably studied about 4 hours per day. I stink in math and did poorly in it. Dont use that Manhattan prep thing. It's just practice problems with no introductory stuff. The most important book i had was a used 2013 GRE book by ETS. I looked at the essays that received 4-6 as well as the horribly written ones. I did one test run. I ran out of time copying the suggested formula of making an outline and all that BS. Maybe write a couple of keywords down and start typing and write as many paragraphs as possible. I noticed that the English graders seemed pretty easy. They just want you to complete a thought. My high school English teachers would've killed some of those papers given a 6 score. They loved the deductive format and not essays full of I, I, I, I (they preferred one say one versus I). So, I gave what ETS expected and not what my old school marm teachers wouldve wanted. Just remember to state their topic, have an intro, middle, and conclusion where you summarize what you wrote and your concluding sentence. I noticed that all the 5-6 scores wrote at least 4-5 paragraphs so I wrote 6 each and corrected all my spelling errors as much as possible while writing (if I spent all that time writing an outline, I wouldnt have had time to look for typos).

The secret to the analytical essay is easy. These are the main things you should critique about: sample size (how large was the sample?). You cannot generalize a result if the sample size is 20 versus 1000. Look at the geography too. An experiment performed in Hawaii on skin cancer may not apply in cold Maine where people probably don't get that much sun to begin with. Time bias. You cannot compare something from 20-30 years ago to today really. Interviewer bias.Is the interviewer really pretty? if they are, the boys or men may spend a lot of time making answers they think the interviewer wants to hear. Answer bias. Are they asking open ended questions or are they baiting them with questions such as "so how horrible of a President is Donald Trump?" What sex are they? A female interviewer will get more accurate answers from a female participant than a male, if asking about feminine hygiene products, right? And of course the all important control group. It doesnt mean crap if you don't have a control to compare to on efficacy. Google research bias and it will list all the bias found in experiments that people should avoid when doing surveys. I think one of my essays was about a researcher who looked at a village in a island 20 years ago, who did an observation study versus this new guy who did an interview study and found compelling evidence that upended the guy from 20 years ago, and planned to utilize that study for all island people. I answered by saying bias may have been introduced by the interviewer by bribing the participants, poor sample size, interviewer possibly picking and choosing interviewee based on looks or demeanor, small sample size relegated to that one village and not the whole island chain or random samples throughout the world, etc.

My test experience was horrible. I left my license home and rushed home to get it. Thank goodness I arrived early at my test. But I was still speeding 90mph and running to make it in the nick of time. Leave early and get there at least 1 hour early. I was still sweating bullets from running when I began my test.

As for the verbal, I learned close to 1000 new words and I don't feel like any of them were useful. The verbal words from Manhattan were kind lame. Then I flipped though these GRE word lists on Quizlet....they were pretty useless too but if you don't feel like you have a large vocabulary then flip through them and learn about 10-20 words per day. I have a fairly good vocabulary to begin with and got all A's in high school and college for English. Then again, I went to ESL for a few years as well. So, I guess I am not a good example to use to gauge. As for the math, I probably should've taken the ETS practice questions. I didn't feel any of the materials were from Manhattan even though Amazon reviews raved about it including this bone head who raves he got a perfect score as an English major from Harvard and therefore qualified to teach GRE classes. I ended up with a 98% written and a 88 verbal. The new GRE makes it hard to deduce answers compared to the oold one. The one if you know one answer, you can find the right answer because the answer choices pretty much only had that word in one of the answer choices not 2-3 to confuse you. But you work with what you have. Answer the short paragraph ones and then come back to the long ones with multiple questions. The points are the same for short paragraph and long paragraph questions, so why waste time on the long ones (I should've done this for math too, instead I spent a ton of time on ones I thought I could get but eventually realized I couldnt solve it). Not too shabby compared to Ivy League. With your time frame, you can study leisurely. I slack off given too much time, so the deadline of 3 weeks actually made me study each day. I almost thought about delaying my test but then I found out you needed to give them 3 business ahead of time to change it so I couldnt change it at the last minute.

[Jdabrowski]

On 6/11/2017 at 2:44 PM, Michael Stone said:

Hey y'all!

 

I hope everyone has had a good weekend so far! I've been thinking of when the best time for me to take the GRE would be. For those that have seen my spreadsheet, for my last 1.5 yrs of school I am going to be focusing on school anywhere between 12-15 credits every semester, including the summer. And after that I intend to go back to my EMS agency to get my PC hours. I have been thinking since I've pretty much cleared this summer open, and I've looked over some GRE stuff and it all looks familiar, I'd just have to go back over it. I made it all the way to calc 3, so i feel confident I can get my algebra skills to where they need to be, and I've been going over some vocab resources, and I'm thinking of going to the ETS website and taking their practice tests. I found a test date right by my university on August 3rd. That gaves me about 2.5 months to study for the GRE, and I'll be ready to apply for all of my schools by spring 2020 because I'll have all of my hours and everything done, so the test is still within the 5 year mark. These are the schools I plan to apply to since I'm staying in NC for family reasons:

School                    App Deadline
Duke                       Oct 1
UNC                        Aug 1
Wake                       Sep 1
ECU                         Sep 1
Wingate                   Jan 15
Methodist                Jan 15
Elon                          Nov 7
Gard-Webb              Sep 1



So, 2.5 months to study for this thing with 1.5 year of school to go, and another year before I apply. Thoughts? Should I do it now since I have the free time to commit to studying for it?

You missed Campbell University for PA school. Check them out as well. Rolling admins, brand new facilities, cadaver labs.

[pabound2016]

Lenoir Rhyne also has a PA program. It was the first school I applied to. Interviewed around mid-late July and got accepted the same day of my interview. I interviewed for all of the NC PA programs except Gardner Webb and UNC. Didn't apply to the former and applied but did not receive an interview from the latter. It's going to be difficult receiving an interview from UNC as they strongly prefer veterans, but it doesn't hurt to try if you have the funds to apply.

 

I actually found the Manhattan prep books helpful, particularly in the Quantitative portion. They have books covering most, if not all, of the concepts that can be covered in the GRE. In college I took up to Calculus 3. I definitely needed the review in some of the things I haven't taken since high school. I just skimmed through most of it but put in more attention to the topics I felt I wasn't well prepared for and spent a lot of times doing practice problems. Overall I spent around 2 weeks studying. Like 2 hrs a day max. 

[Cjbwiley]

I wouldn't say UNC strongly prefers veterans but it certainly does help. If I were you I would still apply to UNC if you are hoping to stay in the area. It's one more chance and if you can afford to apply it wouldn't hurt!