MS in US: GRE

Welcome back fellow aspirants

In the upcoming posts, I will mention about the GRE and TOEFL/IELTS exam in detail so as everyone gets benefitted. In this post, I will solely concentrate on GRE preparation, tips and structure of exam along with some useful tips for everyone.

GRE (GRADUATE RECORD EXAMINATION)

For many years, GRE has been a core ingredient for masters in USA. It is an exam which gives an overview of your technical, verbal as well as analytical skills in a span of almost 4 hours. The exam pattern is however interesting and confusing too. The minimum marks a student gets is 260 and the maximum he can get is 340. So the range is (260-340) with internal distribution as:

VERBAL – minimum (130) and maximum (170) 

QUANT – minimum (130) and maximum (170) 

Awa – minimum (1) and maximum (6) – this is separately evaluated by the examiners but it is a part of the exam.

Each question carries 1 mark and there is no negative marking.  If any student gets nothing correct then his marks will be lowest i.e. 260.As u keep on writing the correct answers, your marks will tend towards 340.

SECTIONS IN DETAIL

Every candidate will come across 5 sections each carrying equal marks which is 20, within these 5 sections one is a non-evaluating section. But no candidate has ever got to know which it is. So don’t ever try to skip any section. There are two patterns of exam being carried, which are:

1. VQVQV

2. QVQVQ

V- VERBAL, Q - QUANT

 

As you can see from above there are five sections involved each carrying equal marks and equal time (30 minutes for each section). So students better increase their speed of thinking as once the time ends for a particular section, exam will automatically shift to the next section without asking, but your answers will be saved without your review (if you had wanted to).

·         AWA (Analytical writing Analysis)

Now as the exam starts each candidate will come across a section of AWA before entering those 5 sections. This is the most important part of the exam and glad it comes at starting when everyone’s mood is fresh and ready to go. Its my personal request for each and every student, especially for those who are opting for PhD, don’t even think to take this section lightly. This section is a writing section and you have two write on two topics each having a time limit of 30 minutes. The topics will be very easy but for god sake don’t write in Basic English which everyone did in 10 and 12. The level needs to be higher here and when you will write such topics better concentrate on the structure of sentence rather than putting explosive words like mundane, camouflage and all.

It’s a very critical section for all and the minimum marks for MS and PHD will be 

MS – 3 or above (for good universities)

PhD – 4 or above (for best universities because not all of them provide this degree)

·         Finally summing up

The main pattern of exam is

AWA then 5 sections (VQVQV or QVQVQ)

AWA (consist of 6 marks)

V and Q consist of 100 marks out of 20 marks are of one non evaluating section which no one knows but everyone has to attend all of them. So finally only 80 questions will be evaluated and 20 (from any one section will be left as non-evaluating)

Each section has a time limit of 30 minutes with no break within any section.

For MS ASPIRANTS

Good GRE score and AWA – (300 + and AWA – 3+)

Dream score and AWA – (320 + and AWA – 4 or above)

For PhD ASPRIANTS

Good GRE score and AWA – (315 + and AWA – 3.5 or above)

Dream score and AWA – (320 + and AWA – 4.5 +)

Its not so hard to score such marks because everyone has that capability from within to reach higher levels. Preparation tips and other stuff will be given in the next blog as everything in one go may lead to overloading. Till then cya friends….