GRE

One big part of wanting to go to grad school is taking the GRE. For those who don't know the GRE is like the SAT, a college entrance exam, for grad school. It's structure is pretty similar to the SAT also. There are three parts. A verbal part with sentence completion and critical reading questions, a math part, and a written part, which didn't exist when I took the SAT but is part of that now as well. I've got a while before I'll probably take it, the consensus seems to be that late summer is the most common time, but I've started studying quite a bit already. I bought a couple of GRE books and have been doing some vocab flash cards as well. I've also been working a little on my spelling, since that's my greatest concern with the essay part. Practicing the verbal questions has been useful but some of the advice they give is pretty questionable. It seems either to be incredibly obvious or exceedingly dangerous, like telling you to skim a lot. Some of the advice from the reading section seems to have been written for someone whose never read anything before. I haven't really started on the math yet, I'm going to do some more of the verbal first, but I looked through it a lot and while there is a bunch I need to practice I hadn't forgotten as much as I was worried I had. It seems like I can take the test either in Guangzhou or Hong Kong, it's all done by computers these days, but it's actually to early to register for the summer tests. It's interesting studying for something again since it has been a couple of years since I graduated, but I'm getting back into the hang of it. I definitely need a good score on the GRE since my GPA wasn't very good but I think I can do well if I study enough.