GRE Courses

GRE Courses in Nepal

The full form of GRE is Graduate Record Examination and the name pretty much defines its purpose. GRE is a test required for students that wish to enroll into a graduate school, PhD program or a fellowship program.

GRE is a computer-based standardized exam administered by Educational Testing Services (ETS), the same non-profit that administers the TOEFL, which presents examinees with a set of questions, mostly multiple choice questions, to quantify their aptitude in different skills. The skills that are tested include verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, critical thinking and analytical writing skills, all of which would be of immense value to students during their graduate studies.
 

About the GRE General Test

When most students in Nepal or elsewhere talk about the GRE, they are referring to what is called the GRE General Test. Apart form the General Test, there are more specialized variations of the test. The specialized tests include tests in psychology, physics, maths, English literature, chemistry and biology. Still, the general test remains the most popular. Hence, this discussion will be centered on the GRE General Test.

The GRE General Test opens a lot of opportunities to students looking to enhance their academic career further after college. The test is often a requirement for admission in the universities and colleges in North America and a few other places in the world. In other places, a good GRE score can be a great addition to one’s admission application.GRE General Test is especially helpful for business degrees and law school applications, but they are generally required for other graduate programs as well.

Breaking this test down further, there are three major segments to this test:

• Analytical Writing
• Verbal Reasoning
• Quantitative Reasoning

The latter two segments have two modules each. Apart from that, a test taker might be prompted with Unscored or Research questions which would contribute to the betterment of the test format in the long run but would not affect the student’s final scores.

So, the first section of the test is the Analytical Writing segment or simply the essay segment. Here, the student is expected to organize and articulate their ideas and opinions in a clear way such that the reader can understand the line of reasoning. Here, the question will outline a certain opinion about a general topic while outlining how the student could formulate a response. The score range of this question is zero to six points and is scored in 0.5 point increments.

This section is followed by the Verbal Reasoning segment. In this part of the test, the student is expected to display their mastery of comprehension, vocabulary, and their ability to understand the implicit and explicit meaning of the given text. The three questions that would be asked within this segment are: Text Completion, Sentence Equivalence, and Reading Comprehension.Text Completion is just a fancy way of saying fill in the blanks. Here, you will take context cues from the piece of text presented and fill in the blanks with the appropriate word. The challenging part of this exercise is actually the level of vocabulary required to understand the available options.

Sentence Equivalence asks you to select two logically coherent options to complete the sentence out of four available options. There are no points for partially correct answers. Hence, you are either right or you are wrong.Then comes the Reading Comprehension segment of the test. Here the examinees are presented with passages accompanied by questions. The answers to said questions are to be devised based on the information provided in the passage.The test then concludes with the Quantitative Reasoning segment.This segment implores the examinee to apply concepts from algebra, arithmetic, geometry, and statistics to approach a series of quantitative comparison, problem solving or data interpretation questions.

Grading the GRE General Test - What is a good GRE Score?

When the scores from all three segments of the GRE General Test are put together, they add up to 340 points. The point breakdown looks something like this:

Don’t get confused by the actual numbers. It is more about the scoring range. Meaning, the lowest that you can score in Analytical Writing, Verbal Reasoning, and Quantitative Reasoning is 0, 130, and 130 respectively. The number of correct responses you give will then be equated and added to the base score to make your final score. The Analytical Writing score goes up in 0.5 point increments, while the other segments go up in one point increments.

So, what is a good score? Most people calculate the GRE test scores as a total of 340, which is easier for the general public to fathom. But in reality, the test scores are issued based on individual segments. So, a general cut-off margin can be drawn at around 160 for the Quantitative Reasoning segment and about 150 for the Verbal Reasoning segment. If you score higher than that, you should qualify for most universities out there. However, you should still check if the universities that you choose have a different cut-off.

Your results should be available 10 to 15 days after you take your exam. Per ETS, the scores should be valid for 5 years. However, some universities might set a tighter expiration date.
 

Where to study a GRE General Test Course in Nepal?

Even with so many educational consultancies around, there actually aren’t that many institutions that hold a GRE class. That being said, the few consultancies that actually have classes for GRE have quite the talented teaching staff on hand. One could find a 2 to 3 month GRE General Test course in Nepal fairly easily still.

Another way that one can prepare for the General Test in Nepal is by using the resources from ETS themselves. Yes, the organization that administers the GRE test also puts out a lot of really useful study material for students, that too for free! Most of the materials available on ETS’s official website is free and one could also make use of the resources over at Khan Academy. That is free as well. Khan Academy offers lessons and practice exercises from almost the absolute basics. With diligent practice, one could crack the GRE General Test from Nepal in about two to three months.

As almost a post script note, it is fair to say that the questions that are asked in the GRE test are skills that a student must have had already acquired by the time they get to applying for a graduate program. So preparing for GRE is more an exercise in revision than learning new things entirely.