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One question that I hear many college students asking around their Junior year is if they need to take the GRE or not. Now, I don’t have an exact answer to it but I have a few points.
What is the GRE?
“The Graduate Record Examination, or GRE, is an important step in the graduate school or business school application process. The GRE is a multiple-choice, computer-based, standardized exam that is often required for admission to graduate programs and graduate business programs (MBA) globally.”
It’s like the big kid version of the SAT and ACT. So, if you haven’t studied basic math and geometry since high school, you might want to start brushing up.
Do I have to take it?
This is now up to the individual school that you are applying to. Each school is different. If you’re in a medical field you’re not going to take the GRE, but the MCAT and for law school the LSAT. For medical and law school, pretty much assume that you’re going to be taking that as those are much more specific tests and you they are required. However with the GRE you might be lucky.
A lot of schools are phasing out the GRE as they are finding it is too general. It encompasses too many graduate studies, and when undergraduate studies are sometimes quite major specific (so less of the CORE work) it isn’t fair to the students who haven’t taken math since Freshmen year in college, or even in High School. I know when I looked to take it, I realized I’d have to be re-teaching myself some of the math portions.
If you know what you want to go to graduate school for (if that is your choice), start looking at schools you’re interested in and reading about their application process. I applied to schools that didn’t require it first and then decided if I didn’t get in then I would take the GRE. But I wanted to save money and save myself a summer of studying. I was lucky.
I need to take it. Now what?
Sure, you could go cold turkey and just try and take the test. You may look at it and feel like you’ve got it. Some people are like that.
However, if you’re not one of those people, then grab yourself one of the GRE books and get to studying. Give yourself a few months to prepare, take a practice exam or two and then sit it. I wouldn’t recommend taking it more than twice. If you do poorly the first time, take some time in between to study some more and take it again. It’s $250 a time to take the test, which is a lot. So plan accordingly.
