Preparing for the GRE
An introduction
The GRE is a source of mystery and fear to many students contemplating applying for graduate school in the US. Virtually all universities and courses still require the GRE General Test, with some programmes also requiring Subject Tests, especially for courses in the maths and sciences.
Yet the GRE should not discourage anyone considering doing a master’s or a PhD in America. Having taken the GRE General Test as part of my ultimately successful application to Stanford’s art history PhD programme, I hope to share with you some of my insights into the GRE and make you approach it with greater confidence.
First off, understand what the GRE General Test consists of: it is split into three components: Quantitative Reasoning (QR), Verbal Reasoning (VR), and Analytical Writing.
GRE scores in context
Now before I go any deeper into these different parts, I want to stress that in preparing to sit the GRE, place it in perspective with the rest of your graduate school application. In my experience, especially for PhD programmes, professors consider your Personal Statement and written work as much more important in judging you as a candidate than your GRE scores. Consequently, you should spend far more time perfecting your Personal Statement and submitted essay(s) than on revising for the GRE. I chose to sit the GRE first before starting on the other parts of my application to get it at out of the way and to ensure it didn’t distract me when it from the really important parts: articulating who you are as a scholar and what kind of academic work you want to pursue.
Thus, I would urge people not to think that disappointing GRE scores are a barrier to entering highly competitive graduate programmes. One should consider carefully about re-sitting the GRE multiple times and think whether doing so will lead you to loose focus from working on more important parts of your application.
That being said, the GRE is asked for by US colleges because it provides a base-line score in maths and English which can be used to compare candidates coming from all over the world and with wildly different educational histories. As such, during the initial sift of applications, GRE scores which seem to contradict your speciality (so a low QR score when you are applying for a maths or science graduate programme) may well give the university pause. Yet it is a myth that you need 170 in QR and VR and a 6 in Analytical Writing to gain entry to Ivy League graduate programmes. A middling to low Quantitative score will not disadvantage someone applying for a humanities PhD for instance; colleges know you will not have focused on maths during your undergraduate degree and that furthermore, it is not essential for a History PhD. Admissions will look at your application contextually, taking into account your prior academic history and your current focus.
That means you can afford to revise for the GRE General Test intelligently. If it is more important for people applying to humanities graduate programmes to have higher scores in VR and the writing section, then focus your preparation on those areas. Do not ignore QR, but do not give it undue weight. The last thing a professor in Harvard’s English Literature department cares about is how well your geometry.
GRE broken down
Yet that’s no excuse to be lazy. For VR and QR none of the questions are hard per se; what makes it difficult is the sheer number of questions in the short amount of time that you have. So practicing under timed conditions is really the only way to go about it: the maths is high school level and the verbal reasoning questions can be answered easily enough with careful reading, but doing it at a relentless pace is the punishing part. You have 20 questions in 30 minutes for VR and 20 questions in 35 minutes for QR. As you will only reach the higher end of the marks by answering all of the questions, timing is crucial.
For Analytical Writing, even those who have majored in a humanities degree, care should be taken. Split into two parts, ‘Analyse an Issue’ and ‘Analyse an Argument’, ‘Issue’ requires you to respond to a prompt on a vaguely topical but generic subject, while ‘Argument’ presents an extract which you must pull apart, exposing its assumptions and faulty logic. The Writing section is looking for a very specific writing style which does not require personality: state your case and move on. Anyone who has sat exams for a humanities course will not feel particularly tested here, in terms of writing two essays in an hour. What is important, is understanding beforehand the expectations of the markers and the kind of essays looked for; once you’ve internalised this mentality, Analytical Writing shouldn’t present too much of a challenge.
ETS (who administer the GRE tests) offer a variety of past papers and revision books. I would recommend exploring their website before buying any so you can see which part of the exam’s content you will need to focus on (I needed a refresher in maths after not having done it for five years) and then finding a cheap, second-hand edition, rather than going for the overprice revision material on the ETS site.
The GRE General Test should not be seen as scary, or a barrier to applying for graduate programmes in the United States; nor should it be accorded undue time and prominence as you prepare your application to graduate school. Once you break down the GRE into its constituent elements, it becomes far less daunting and instead a manageable part of the application which ultimately will take far less effort than writing your all important Statement of Purpose.
Author: Altair - Stanford
PhD History of Art
I completed my undergraduate degree at the University of Oxford and graduated with a first class degree. I am currently studying for a master’s degree in art history. Beginning in September 2019, I will be begin my PhD in twentieth-century British art history.
