**salams,
i collected some info abt the GRE for a friend in Pakistan last yr, these tips were emailed to me by some pakistani grad students in my college. they have been written by different ppl. Allah un ka bhala karay :~)
wasim21 in cafe posted that he would like some tips on GREs and i had these emails lying with me so i am posting them here…hope they help you guys as well :~) **
Well first of all For GRE general:
The best is to prepare thru practice and ETS GRE Big Book has almost 20
paper based previous test that serve for this purpose… Its the most
helpful book that i found.
For understanding tricks of analytical, mathematics review and verbal
section, one can use Barrons and keplan.
and lastly for CBT, ETS provides two sample test, kaplan has three
computer based tests. They can be used to familiarise with the CBT
testing, once one is thru with his basic prep.
For GRE (CS)
There is not many books which provides sample tests. But the one i
remember is ETS GRE Computer Sceince book, it has two sample papers which will help give idea about the pattern of the test.
For Gre CS subject test one needs to cover compilers, automata, analysis of algorithm, Logic, discrete Maths and computer architecture. They has started including some questions about the basic OOP programming but they are not really tough.
Following could be good resources.
Analysis of Algo - CLR Book
Compilers - Ullman aho sethi
Architecture - hennesy petterson or stallings
Logic - Mano
etc etc
I am not sure how much this would help - because i did it 10 years ago but got a great score.
I went through the Barron’s and other GRE books - in my days - I just went to the American Consulate Library and htey had tons of books. Plus aslo hasd actual GRE exam books.
Though I would ask an Indian friend in school - they supposedly have the system down to a science.
I would recommend studying GRE’s and Barron’s preparation books and if you have the money, join Kaplan’s training program.
ETS also publishes practice tests for both General GRE and Computer Science tests.
I just studied Barron’s and GRE’s practice tests.
I think it depends on the person’s abilities in the three individual
sections: analytic, quantitative, and verbal. I used a Barron’s GRE
preparation guide. The preparation involved sitting down and doing the 6 or so example GRE tests in a timed manner. For me quantitative and analytic parts were rather simple and I didn’t gain anything from the Barron’s guide. However, my weakness was in the verbal section, and their vocabulary list helped me up my score noticeably. The real gain is knowing where one stands and what needs improvement, and that is definitely where the example tests help. How one improves their weakness is a matter of personal preference. Reading good books was another thing I did extensively to improve my vocabulary.
I used almost all of the material available on GRE i.e. Barrons, Arcos,
Kaplan, Princeton Review, Big Book, ETS Power Prep
For quantitative I think Arco’s Review and excercises followed by CAT exams which are in kaplan, princeton review and power prep are enough. I only spared it 5 days though.
For analytical section, I found doing Barrons problems( for doing longer
problems), followed by kaplan and then big book analytical exams (for
gaining speed) and then doing CATs (from princeton review, kaplan and ETS) to do difficult questions in time…which really helped me.
For Verbal i think you can give that person better advice. However, in GRE, vocabulary has ever more importance than in SATs. So vocabulary should be good to get high marks in verbal. Doing big book exams help ppl a lot for verbal.