GRE Subject Exam feedback

[alissaroot]

Whew! It's finally over, thank goodness. I live more than 2 hours from my closest GRE testing location, because I basically live in the middle of a giant cornfield, so that's how my day began. I'm glad I set out early, because finding the building and testing room was my first challenge. I've seen other posts that have mentioned that, so it bears repeating. On a big campus like Indiana University, give yourself extra time to find everything. I wandered around the building for almost 25 minutes before I found someone to ask for directions that early in the morning. And that was after I had to stop at Village Pantry to ask directions to the building at which I was supposed to be.

There were about fifty of us there. No one chatted or anything. All I said the whole time was, "Bless you" to a girl who sneezed. And I whispered. Most everyone was looking over textbooks, their GRE sample booklet, or like me, flashcards. There were about 5 people there for the Math exam, 4 for the English Lit, 3 for Chemistry, 7 for Biochem, 10 for Comp. Sci, 5 for Biology, 6 for Physics, and the rest for Psychology. We all had to raise our hands to get the right test booklet is the only reason I know this.

We were all assigned seats ahead of time, the seating was noted on a list of all test takers. The proctor must of told us 20 times we couldn't have mechanical pencils. We had to leave all our stuff at the front of the room. No one was allowed to have anything at their desk except their ID, admission ticket, and #2 pencils.Because there were so many of us, it took over an hour to get us all checked in, even though they started rounding us up at 8:00.

Anyway, the test finally began a little after 9am, and I answered every single question. I had about 40 minutes left at the end, so I looked over my answers and changed two of them. Then I got mad on the way home because I realized the correct answers to 3 of the questions that I know I answered wrong. Oh well. What's done is done. I feel like I probably got about 130-135 raw score, based on my experience taking practice tests, which is about what I expected. Even if it turns out I totally bombed, I'll still come back here and update my scores so you guys will have a baseline comparison against my scores, prior level of knowledge, and study preparation. Then you can gauge how well you think you will do. I say, go for it. For the price and time, it's worth a roll of the dice. You can always just take individual exams if you fall a little short. In fact, I think I will go register for the Literature In English GRE in April as soon as I am done with this post, because I really am just crazy like that. Why not? It's worth a shot!

As for the content of the test, I'm scared to say. They practically make you sign an oath in blood not to reveal anything to anyone about the content. And if my scores got canceled, no matter how terrible they are, I would be furious! But...here's some updated study advice. Buy at least one of the prep books. Princeton Review, Kaplan, and Arco are all about the same, so get at least one of those. I'd say that will cover about 60% of the exam. Make sure you know it by heart. And I really like the REA book as an accurate gauge of progress, even though there are more " (D) All of the above (E) None of the above" type questions in there than what I encountered on the exam. If I had it to do over again, I would spend more time on Research Methods and Design rather than Statistics, even though that is supposedly a small part of the test, there's a lot about analyzing an experiment. "What wrong with this experiment?"' "What type of experiment is this?", "What could be done to improve this experiment?" , "How would a researcher analyze the results of this experiment?", "What do these results mean according to this graph?" There seemed to quite a lot of those type questions. And a lot of analyzing a scenario. "If Bob has this symptom and this one and that one, what would his diagnosis be? Which Axis of the DSM-IV would that be? What treatment should Bob have? What is the most likely cause of Bob's illness? If Bob did such-and-such, what is that symptom called?" Those are some examples of what you will encounter. Gah!

I'm glad I found that Psychology Encyclopedia at the library, because it was really recent, and the GRE prep books don't cover anything recent. You definitely should drop some money on the most recent General Psychology textbook you can afford. And pick one up on Experimental Design and Applied Psychology while you are at it. Sorry I can't be more specific! But I really think it can be done, and if I had more time I'd go buy a new Psych textbook right now and give it another try with some more recent knowledge in the field under my belt.

Also, thank you to everyone who sent me messages and emails wishing me good luck yesterday, that really meant a lot to me. Well, it was up on the chalkboard that it could be up to six weeks before we get our scores, but I'll make sure and let you guys know how I did! I feel pretty good about it. I did the best I could do, anyway. At least I tried!