Over the long lay-off, I decided to go back to school to finish my Masters degree. Unfortunately, I didn't decide soon enough to start in the fall semester, so I'm shooting for this Spring. No big deal right? I've taken the GRE before, got my letters of recommendation, application, writing samples, transcripts. Too bad I took the GRE back in 1993. They only keep your scores for five years these days. So I had to take it again. Having done that, my main comments is this: If I ever have to take a standardized test again, it will be too soon.
The GRE has changed a bit since I last took it. When I took it back in 1993, with my college Statistics, Finite Mathematics, and Formal Logic courses still firmly entenched in my mind, it seemed like an easier version of the SAT. Same environment, same format, and I received a higher score. Times have definitely changed.
I took the test at a Sylvan Prometric, which had technical problems with their computer system. This delayed my test two hours. I did the whole rigamarole, even attesting that I would not divulge the contents of the test. No problem. I went to my assigned computer in the crowded testing room, and logged into the test. I was immediately hit with the "new" Analytical Writing Assesment.
The Writing Assessment has replaced the old IQ test Analytical portion of the GRE. I was not prepared for it to be the first thing I saw. I was in the mood for a nice set of Antonyms, or even some old-fashioned Algebra. So I wrote two pretty mind-numbing essays for an hour and a half. I decided that a middle of the road score of 4 (out of 6) would be just fine with me.
The Verbal section was pretty straight forward, with the exception that the more questions you get right, the harder the test becomes. Harder questions, result in higher scores. By the time I was done, I didn't even recognize the words involved as being English, much less know what they meant.
The Math section went as I expected. It was long. It was tedious. Toward the end, I was just picking answers that looked close. Not the best way to take a test. The Math section is also formatted strangely. In addition to the familiar problems where you just answer a question, there were comparson questsions, where you have to determine a relationhip between two columns of mathematical information.
Needless to say, by the time I was done, I thought my brain was going to ooze out my ears.