While I can't actually divulge any information on what it was like, I'm free to tell you my impressions on the test and what it was like.
I didn't do as well as I had hoped, but that's okay. I have a few projects coming up (that I will be sharing with hubski soon) that pertain to the subject that I intend to master.
Has anyone some thoughts or feelings on what the GRE is like?
I took it many years ago, before there was a written component. I had already been accepted to the PhD program, but my academic advisor said that I should take it anyway. I didn't study. As a physics undergrad, I should have gotten a perfect score on math, and I was a bit embarrassed that I didn't. I did well enough on verbal, as well as the analytic part. Some practice would have helped. The GRE is utter bullshit. I have a good friend that got her PhD in literature at Brown and I beat her on the verbal. The only reality that reflects is how shitty the GRE is at discerning test-taking ability from genuine ability. cgod and I were roommates when another one of our roommates was studying vocab for the GRE. My roommate and I got about 75% of the words. cgod got more like 95%. His brain is a fucking dictionary. My wife almost got a perfect score on the verbal GRE section. She had yet to come to the US, and her English was quite poor at the time. What matters in life is obvious, but we talk around it. The GRE is not a big deal. Study, do your best, move on.
We gotta keep straight that too many folks bank on the reliability of the GRE. Yeah it's an inexpensive way for institutions to reliably (and repeatably) sort folks out. But, is it truly a VALID measure of intelligence? Or, a valid measure of " the stuff" a person should have for grad school? Doubt it. Gotta imagine too many creative minds go unrecognized due to the heavy weight given to this measure. Or, maybe worse, how many excellent 'testers' go out into the world believing the are masters of the universe because of their high test score, yet really have next to zero applicable knowledge or skills.
I think the hardest part was when they required copying that paragraph in cursive.
Yeah, I never really clicked with the issue one, but the argument essay is literally the most formulaic thing you can write: Assumption #1, why might assumption #1 be false, what if assumption #1 is false. Paragraph break. Assumption #2, ...The essay writing isn't reflective of ability, just adherence to standards.
Took the practice test. Did okay. Took another practice test. Did okay. Showed up for the test. Sat down at the computer. WTFarethesequestions Like, the first one was something I sort of recognized. The next one was complicated. The next one was like that scene in Men In Black where they're asking you truly bizarre shit. And it just went on like that. It was not good. And then I got a 1570. Which I understand is pretty good. Still didn't get into the grad program I applied for so it's all rather moot. However, four months later I was making $600 a day while a graduate of the program I didn't get into changed the coffee in the break room. All in all, a win.
fuck the GRE. that's all. took it twice and actually tried the first time around, got great verbal (expected) decent quant (unexpected) shit writing (unexpected...it was a 4 but that's not good enough for me lol). said fuck this i need a good writing score to get into a good grad school in dc so i retook it just to get a better writing score (and did. i got a 5 that time around) and then dicked my way through the rest of the test and basically got the same scores. so it's a bs test and idk why it matters. it doesn't test anything besides your ability to take the gre. doesn't matter; got into dream grad program anyway
Like flag, I'm confident that this test I've never taken or even really looked at for more than a few minutes a few days in practice books would have been a breeze if I had actually bothered to take it. That's a healthy 50/50 sarcasm/not mix. Who knows about standardized tests, anyway? I'm a fast tester (the last big exam I took, took me half the time it took all other participants, and that was with me deliberately slowing myself down) and generally a good tester. But, like - does that actually mean anything? Does that say anything about me? Is that even something to be proud of?
It's more like ... a series of imperfect correlations added together. Someone who got an 800 verbal is x much more likely to write poetry. Generally speaking, you'd rather hire the kid who got a 750 than the one who got a 600. Maybe the 800 math scorer is slightly less likely to need a calculator in daily work at the lab than the one who got a 600. Add the small things up, and the overall score is, I'd say, pretty helpful. Not perfect -- and probably not as ironclad as it used to be treated by university admissions officers, but still helpful. Of course, this is all coming from someone who thinks this is the worst Supreme Court decision since 1857, not because of the immediate affirmative action it encouraged, which was probably necessary, but because of the insidious idea that was planted in the labor market: you are not allowed to explicitly discern an employee's intelligence before you hire them.