GRE Subject Tests

[MaieJaie]

Good luck to everyone studying for the exams! I took the GRE Literature last fall. I enrolled in the test with a goal of 55%, which would fulfill the last of my credits for the Literature in English Major at EC, was scoring about 45% on practice tests the week before the test, and somehow managed to snag an 81% on the actual exam itself. In other words, I'm glad I took it!

I've posted some of my study materials elsewhere, but now that there's a Sticky for this, and an apparent interest in the exams again, I wanted to go ahead and post some study links again.

I highly, highly recommend the Vade Mecum: A GRE for Literature in English Study Guide. I used it as the outline of my studies. I probably based more than 80% of my studying on this guide. One note, though, the site has an error in naming Richard Lovelace as a Metaphysical poet, whereas he is generally considered to be a Cavalier poet instead.

Another helpful site is Literary Resources: Criticism, Research, and GRE Study Aids, found here: Literary Resources: Criticism, Research, and GRE Study Aids. In particular, the Literary Terms section contains a lot of words you'll want to know. Also, it does a nice job at placing the literature in historical perspective, which is very useful for the GRE Literature.

Another one I liked is the English Literature GRE Study Guide. The Oxford Guides section requires a subscription, but the links on the left side provide plenty of free and helpful information.

This site GRE Reading List contains a Recommended Reading List for GRE Subject Test in Literature. I'd recommend reading the shorter works. As for the novels and the epic poems, there's no way to read all of those before the test, but just having a familiarity with the plot, themes, major characters, and maybe a couple of well-known quotes should suffice. In fact, I actually prepared myself by watching the film versions of a lot of these books, and that proved sufficient to answer the questions on the exam.

If you're rusty on versification (poetic analysis terms), this site pretty much covers anything you'd encounter on the exam: Terms for Poetic Analysis.

This site is specific to American literature, in historical perspective: Brief Timeline of American Literature and Events, 1620-1920. This site is specific to British literature: The San Antonio College LitWeb British Literature Index


Some tips:

Buy the Princeton Review's Cracking the GRE Subject Test in Literature. Read it, live it, breathe it. I still my have my copy, if anybody needs one.

You're allowed to write in the test book. When asked to determine meter, identify rhyme scheme, or find the alexandrine, it can be helpful to just write along the poem. It saves time, too.

Try to answer most, if not all, questions on the first run-through. The time goes by faster than you'd expect. If I narrowed it down to two answer choices, or if I just "had a hunch," then I took a guess and moved on. If not, I left it blank and came back to it after I'd finished the rest of the test. I only had about ten minutes remaining once I'd made my first run through the test questions, so there wasn't much time left for the questions I wasn't sure of.