I have my sources … I will shoot for 800 in quant section and not worry about verbal at all.
i took the GRE four years ago when applying to grad schools and i’d say anyone with a quantative background should be able to rock the math section easily. i naturally bombed the verbal but did not care, and neither should anyone else. also if you are not applying to business schools but to some finance masters/phd programs and are trying to emphasize quant skills, there are also GRE subject tests in addition to the general GRE. The GRE subject test in math was pretty heavy when i took it - it covers comprehensively all math foundations, from multivariable calc to diff eq to real/complex analysis to abstract and linear algebra.
Thanks, Mobius.
Would you guys think it’s safe to apply to a b-school program that takes GRE with a top a quant score and crap verbal score? I’m considering it, but would like to know if anyone has first-hand experience with it. I like Mobius’ advice though and am leaning towards that for my own satisfaction, but it would be nice to hear some success stories.
From what I was told, all top PhD programs don’t care about verbal score.
The quant section on the GRE is practically a joke. Not on the same level as the GMAT although the types of questions are different. Lots more geometry on the GRE. I studied for about a day and crushed it with an 800. That being said, an 800 is like the 94 %ile because a lot more people do very well on the quant section on the GRE. I can’t recall the breakdowns on the GMAT but I know an 800 is like the 99 %ile, maybe 98. A 94 is probably like 750. This tells me that the GMAT gives a more detailed representation of quant measurement. The verbal section is not a joke, at least not for people that are used to dealing with numbers all day. I studied probably 3 days and could only muster a 630. If you can memorize that list of words and what they mean as well as their antonyms, you should easily be able to get mid 700’s on verbal. It all depends how much time you want to spend studying. Also, don’t blow off the essay section. I think length is your friend on this section. If you write a lot, your score will be higher. Use varying sentence structures and throw in stuff like semicolons and quotation marks. I know it sounds stupid but part of the scoring is related to how well you can use the various writing techniques. Read over the examples of what constitutes each score for the essay so you know what the graders want to see. As far as comparing the GMAT and the GRE, the GRE decomposes your score into verbal and quant and doesn’t not give you a combined score or an overall percentile. I think b-schools like that the GMAT does this. Also, and this is only my opinion, given that the GMAT quant section is more intense than the GRE, I bet b-schools think more highly of the GMAT.
When I took the test 15 years ago they had three sections verbal, quant and analytical. I needed 1500 on quant+analytical to apply to top Ph.D programs. The verbal score was irrelevant.
hezagenius Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > The quant section on the GRE is practically a > joke. Not on the same level as the GMAT although > the types of questions are different. Lots more > geometry on the GRE. I studied for about a day > and crushed it with an 800. That being said, an > 800 is like the 94 %ile because a lot more people > do very well on the quant section on the GRE. I > can’t recall the breakdowns on the GMAT but I know > an 800 is like the 99 %ile, maybe 98. A 94 is > probably like 750. This tells me that the GMAT > gives a more detailed representation of quant > measurement. perhpas the reason for this is that GMAT is confined to business school, whereas GRE quant is open to all fields, including very quant-oriented people (math, physics, CS, engineering, etc.) who don’t have as hard of a time getting the 800 as in the GMAT (smart people there of course, but not so quant oriented smarts)
sublimity Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > perhpas the reason for this is that GMAT is > confined to business school, whereas GRE quant is > open to all fields, including very quant-oriented > people (math, physics, CS, engineering, etc.) who > don’t have as hard of a time getting the 800 as in > the GMAT (smart people there of course, but not so > quant oriented smarts) Yes, this is true. When you get your scores in the mail, GRE also includes a histogram of how each undergrad major performed. The engineering and physics majors are skewed pretty heavily to the right while some of the soft sciences and liberal arts majors are skewed toward the left.