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Yeah. This is true, and it's the first intelligent thing anyone has said in this thread. The verbal section is much more challenging. And it is not word memoriz

by PAWebb 18y ago

Yeah. This is true, and it's the first intelligent thing anyone has said in this thread. The verbal section is much more challenging. And it is not word memorization, although that is part of it.

sanj 18y ago
I talked to the dept head in aero at MIT during the 90s and he told me that the verbal section of the GRE was the only correlation he'd seen to success.
- dissenter 18y ago
  Funny, I heard a rumor that the only people who got 800s on the verbal section were foreigners. (Read: people who can't speak English.) The explanation was that they were the only ones willing to invest enough time to form-fit the ETS's method of verbal testing. In my own experience the verbal section of the GRE was entirely nonsensical. The vocabulary was difficult and exactly the type of vocabulary I would use if it was my goal not to be understood, but at least I could see how it might be a useful and reliable differentiator. Nobody uses these words often enough for them have any statistically meaningful shades of meaning. If the goal of communication is having other people understand you, why would you deal in words that are notable precisely because they are difficult to understand? The reading comprehension made less sense. I don't think it's possible to select a passage that has an unambiguous meaning and yet will be misunderstood by a statistically meaningful number of ambitious, college-educated people. So the question-making process must necessarily be corrupt. I recall many questions which wasted much of my time. Several possible responses, none of which are obviously wrong. I know which one I feel is right---or maybe I do. Which one does the GRE feel is right? Even on sample tests, where I could see the supposed answer, I would read and reread the passages, and understand little about what the correctness or incorrectness of the responses had to do with the meaning of the passage. I don't think you can presume to have an objective and clear-cut A or B answer as you might on the SAT. The granularity of college-level material is simply too fine. The only thing you can measure is how well you have matched yourself to the GRE's way of thinking, and that is not a particularly valuable expenditure of time.
  - Prrometheus 18y ago
    I have friends who have done very well on both sections. They didn't practice much. They tend to be polymaths and read a lot.
  - tokenadult 18y ago
    "I heard a rumor" I'm a counterexample to the rumor.
    - davi 18y ago
      Me too. Somehow I aced the verbal section, with a moderate amount of study, starting ~6 weeks before the test. I think it might be because I was raised without a TV and so read a lot as a kid. The questions at the end of the test (it's adaptive, computer administered) seemed to focus on the exact nuance of similar words.
      - davi 18y ago
        And the jury's out on any correlation to my success.
    - anonyreliant 18y ago
      99% percentile on verbal. Didn't really study for it though, just read a lot as a kid and had the fortune to have studied Latin. Worth mentioning that my life doesn't correlate to success in any meaningful way, except that I keep making decisions which make me happy if poor.
      - tokenadult 18y ago
        Agreeing with both replies to me, I think the secret of my success on the GRE verbal section (twice) was reading a lot for fun. And agreeing with them about correlations between GRE success and life success, I still pursue a lot of personal intellectual interests but have not become notably wealthy, although any middle-class American is wealthy in worldwide terms.
  - 18y ago

by PAWebb 18y ago

Yeah. This is true, and it's the first intelligent thing anyone has said in this thread. The verbal section is much more challenging. And it is not word memorization, although that is part of it.

sanj 18y ago

I talked to the dept head in aero at MIT during the 90s and he told me that the verbal section of the GRE was the only correlation he'd seen to success.

dissenter 18y ago
Funny, I heard a rumor that the only people who got 800s on the verbal section were foreigners. (Read: people who can't speak English.) The explanation was that they were the only ones willing to invest enough time to form-fit the ETS's method of verbal testing. In my own experience the verbal section of the GRE was entirely nonsensical. The vocabulary was difficult and exactly the type of vocabulary I would use if it was my goal not to be understood, but at least I could see how it might be a useful and reliable differentiator. Nobody uses these words often enough for them have any statistically meaningful shades of meaning. If the goal of communication is having other people understand you, why would you deal in words that are notable precisely because they are difficult to understand? The reading comprehension made less sense. I don't think it's possible to select a passage that has an unambiguous meaning and yet will be misunderstood by a statistically meaningful number of ambitious, college-educated people. So the question-making process must necessarily be corrupt. I recall many questions which wasted much of my time. Several possible responses, none of which are obviously wrong. I know which one I feel is right---or maybe I do. Which one does the GRE feel is right? Even on sample tests, where I could see the supposed answer, I would read and reread the passages, and understand little about what the correctness or incorrectness of the responses had to do with the meaning of the passage. I don't think you can presume to have an objective and clear-cut A or B answer as you might on the SAT. The granularity of college-level material is simply too fine. The only thing you can measure is how well you have matched yourself to the GRE's way of thinking, and that is not a particularly valuable expenditure of time.
- Prrometheus 18y ago
  I have friends who have done very well on both sections. They didn't practice much. They tend to be polymaths and read a lot.
- tokenadult 18y ago
  "I heard a rumor" I'm a counterexample to the rumor.
  - davi 18y ago
    Me too. Somehow I aced the verbal section, with a moderate amount of study, starting ~6 weeks before the test. I think it might be because I was raised without a TV and so read a lot as a kid. The questions at the end of the test (it's adaptive, computer administered) seemed to focus on the exact nuance of similar words.
    - davi 18y ago
      And the jury's out on any correlation to my success.
  - anonyreliant 18y ago
    99% percentile on verbal. Didn't really study for it though, just read a lot as a kid and had the fortune to have studied Latin. Worth mentioning that my life doesn't correlate to success in any meaningful way, except that I keep making decisions which make me happy if poor.
    - tokenadult 18y ago
      Agreeing with both replies to me, I think the secret of my success on the GRE verbal section (twice) was reading a lot for fun. And agreeing with them about correlations between GRE success and life success, I still pursue a lot of personal intellectual interests but have not become notably wealthy, although any middle-class American is wealthy in worldwide terms.
- 18y ago