Testing, Testing: Four Seniors Share Their Graduate Exam Advice

Standardized testing. There are fewer words that can produce pure anxiety in a student than those two. As college students prepare their post-graduate plans, many are opting for graduate study. With that decision comes a variety of test requirements. Whether you’re preparing for the Graduate Record Examination (GRE), Medical College Admission Test (MCAT), or Law School Admission Test (LSAT), there are plenty who have battled and conquered the test before you. We talked to four seniors about their testing experience and advice for those preparing to take the tests in the future.
 
Kate Pickering
Test: GRE General Test
What study aids and methods of studying did you use?
I got the big thick study books and did math worksheets out of them and then I got a thing of 500 GRE vocabulary flashcards…I really needed to work on math because I hadn’t done math for 4 years.
 
Did you have any fears or worries about a particular section?
Definitely the math, just because I was terrible at math in high school and some of the stuff I felt like I was learning for the first time, even though I would vaguely remember going over it in high school.
 
Is there anything you wish you had done differently?
I probably would have maybe tried to prepare longer…I took it in the summer so my plan was to study all summer and then I got busy with work and stuff so I didn’t end up studying for as long as I wanted…And then maybe a little bit more work with the writing prompts just because sort of in my head I was like, “Okay, I have this down.” But then I realized they actually have a really specific idea of how this writing prompt should be structurally.
 
What is your #1 piece of advice for students currently preparing to take the test?
Work sort of methodically and do a little bit over a long period of time so that you retain more and then…keep yourself as calm as possible because it’s really easy to work yourself up and pysch yourself up, especially because…[on the computerized version of the test] if you get an answer right it gets harder. If you get an answer wrong then the questions get easier. So you can kind of tell how you’re doing, which is kind of scary. But you have to not think about it and just let yourself do what you need to do because it’s really easy to freak yourself out about how much is riding on the GRE, and that’s totally unproductive.
 
Ellen Snell
Test: GRE General Test and GRE Subject Test in English Literature
What study aids and methods of studying did you use?
There are lots of different kinds of GRE prep books you can get and there are a lot of different companies, but I just found one that was a format that I liked. It was the same brand of book that I had gotten to prepare for the SAT and ACT…I made about a million flashcards…especially for the vocabulary because just because you know you’ve read a word doesn’t mean that you really understand what it means. Unless I knew the exact meaning of what it was I made sure to make a flashcard for it. So I’d say that the book, the practice book, is really important. Also, there are resources on the ETS [Educational Testing Service] website that you can use. There are a lot of electronic practice tests that they’ll give you for free that you can use that are really helpful. There was a free test session that Kaplan offered here at DePauw, so I went to that, and that was helpful. For taking the GRE English [Literature subject test]…the DePauw English department offered these really great free sessions where professors came and talked about questions pertaining to their specific subject area. And that was awesome because there was a test booklet that we all downloaded from the ETS website and we could go through those by subject area and do them together. And that helped a lot.
 
Did you have any fears or worries about a particular section?
I think the section on the general test that I was most apprehensive about was the logical and math section because a lot of the concepts aren’t things that are that difficult, it’s just stuff that you maybe haven’t done in a really long time. And so it’s important to go and review all of the different things…I actually was really lucky. During fall break I met up with my senior high school math teacher, and we had about 4 or 5 sessions for an hour and a half each where we went over some of the practice sessions together and that was really helpful. I think the most important thing in preparing, whether it’s for a section you’re worried about or not, is just setting aside regular increments of time, and it doesn’t have to be really long, but just a set time every day that you look at practice questions so that you can get through the whole book and have enough time to review stuff.
 
Is there anything you wish you had done differently?
I wish I would have allowed more time for making all the English flash cards because even if you’re putting down a quick definition on the back…as an English major I guess I sort of overestimated my vocabulary, and I wish I had allowed more time to make the flashcards because there are a lot of words that I didn’t know.
 
What is your #1 piece of advice for students currently preparing to take the test?
I guess my number one piece of advice would be to not freak out…Just allow yourself a couple of months in advance and get a study book. You’ll be fine.
 
Staci Orr
Test: MCAT
What study aids and methods of studying did you use?
I actually got the Kaplan books offline. Kaplan does a course that is extremely expensive so I didn’t want to do that. I just got the study books that they use for the course on Ebay.
 
Did you have any fears or worries about a particular section?
I was most worried about the physical sciences because I’m not the strongest in physics. But it actually ended up being my best section…I thought that I would actually do a lot better in the other two sections and I did a little bit worse. So, it’s a little bit hard to predict, I think.
 
Is there anything you wish you had done differently?
[I wish] I had started studying more consistently earlier because I signed up for it and it just kind of came upon me really fast. And it was during the school year so it was kind of hard to balance studying with classes. So maybe have a longer span of time to study to get prepared for it and maybe do it at the start of summer, too, so I could have more time to do just that rather than working on all my classes on top of that.
 
What is your #1 piece of advice for students currently preparing to take the test?
I would say definitely keep your science textbooks because looking through those will help you look for examples of that type of question that they’ll ask. And then also just make sure that you’ve taken all of the classes that they say that you need in order to take the MCAT because I actually took it before I had taken the second semester of physics which was not probably the best idea…Take all the classes that they recommend in order to get into med school before you take this so you’ll score better.
 
Alaina Hobbs
Test: LSAT
What study aids and methods of studying did you use?
I just went to Barnes and Noble and got the standard LSAT review book, I think it was Princeton Review, and the very first thing I did was take a practice test—go and do a run through just so I could get an idea of what I needed to work on and kind of where I was. And then based on that those are kind of the areas I worked on…I did get another book from the Law School Admissions Council. They publish their old tests so I got a book of ten of the old tests just to do some of the sections that were a little bit more difficult for me.
 
Did you have any fears or worries about a particular section?
Well, the logic games is always the one that’s kind of difficult for everyone, difficult in terms of kind of not having enough time to get through the section and just because it’s an unusual format, which to be honest was the biggest problem for me. So just doing enough of them so that you’re not thrown off by the way they ask the questions or the wording, I think really kind of helped me out. Obviously it’s all logic based so like once you kind of have those general principles you’re good, but it can get tricky just in terms of some unusual wording or ways of setting up the questions.
 
Is there anything you wish you had done differently?
You can always say that you wish you’d spent more time preparing, maybe get a higher score. Overall, I felt like I put a decent amount of time into it.
 
What is your #1 piece of advice for students currently preparing to take the test?
I think I would tell them one of the best things you can do is just familiarize yourself as much as possible with the components of the test, whether you do that by taking practice tests to help you get used to the timing or going through a bunch of questions in the section that you find the most odd. That’s where the LSAT really messes people up. It’s not information that you had to learn in school like the GRE. It’s just logic. So making sure that you’re really comfortable with the types of questions asked in kind of the way they’ll be framed saves you a lot of time on the test and it makes you feel a lot more confident and comfortable when you’re taking it.