I took the GRE on June 3rd, 2008. I wasn’t that confident about the Verbal section and was banking on the Quants section to take me through the exam with a good score and thankfully that happened.
I reached the place with my pal Sriram at about 12:15 for the 1 o’clock exam. I was asked to fill in a confidentiality statement which means that I cannot disclose any questions that came to me during the exam. And I don’t remember any of them either ![:)]()
! I entered the exam rooms at about 12:30 and was relieving myself of the tension by going through the procedures in front of my screen. These were about how to use a mouse, keyboard etc ![:)]()
! Then, I found them boring and was ready to take up the exam. I faced the AWA (Analytical Writing) section. I chose an issue about “loyalty” and started typing. After the first 20 mins of writing the issue, I found that I was going off track! I then had to rewrite most parts of the issue. So, I would always advice you to carefully read the issue topic before starting to type. Then there was an argument which I did quite well. After the AWA section, I felt the need for a break and took a couple of minutes to have a drink of water. Then, I started the Verbal section. Throughout the Verbal section, I was in a state of equanimity and was never tensed at all. I thought I had done well and was expecting a score of something above 600. Then came Quants. This was a bit time consuming and I had to surmise a couple of answers due to the lack of time. I was expecting a score of something above 750 in Quants. In all, I expected something above 1350. After the usual sections, I got another argument which was for some research. I did that with exemplifying confidence. Then came the time for the results! I got a score of 1290, 490 in Verbal and the full monty 800 in Quants. I guess, the reason why I was able to muster only 490 in Verbal was my lack of preparation as far as the Word Lists are concerned. All the words were from Barron’s and I must have missed out on a few questions probably because I misunderstood the meaning of some word. I got three RCs and I did them or more appropriately, I thought I did them really well. I gave just a couple of colleges’ names after the test, so that ETS can send my marks to them. On the whole, it was a well organised exam. And so, I selected the best options in the feedback forms they gave me. It was really a great experience for me even though I didn’t score that much!
I might probably write the exam again in December and I’m sure that I’ll be well prepared for it. In fact, I’m planning to do a nifty little application which can help those aspiring for GRE to easily remember the words. And I would surely release that as Open Source under the GPL ![:)]()
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And lastly, I thank everybody who wished me good luck to do well in the exam. But for them, I wouldn’t have got this score!