Archive for the ‘Strategies’ Category

GRE Test preparation Strategy And Tips

Posted by Test Preparation on December 30th, 2010

Preparation Strategy for Verbal

First you will start work on vocabulary quarter in advance. In starting you can work on 10 word lists per day, from Barrons. Then read the word lists in the morning and revision the same in evening. Slowly slowly you catch the speed of reading the word lists and also increase the number of words per day. And, then revise the reading word lists on weekends. As you will fell, only studying and memorizing words, without revision, was not of much use, every weekend you should revise the already reading words.

You can’t get good score on the basis of vocabulary, If you have not started work on RC first. Then write down the 6-7 different kind of question from a passage, and study passages had these questions in brain. The Nova series book would have separatism of RC questions. Therefor, you should work on at least 2 RC’s (from Barrons, Nova and most importantly Big-Book),along with reading word lists.

You will be finished word lists in a month before your actual exam. Once done, then you start working on Antonyms, Analogies and Sentence Completion (from the exercise books). This was purposely done, because without having the words, running on these kind of questions will feel bootless. And, also start revision of 5 word lists in a day. And also reading Nova books for some extra words, in the mean time. But, this won’t be as difficult as the Barron’s.

You will found the Analogies is quite tricky in all the verbal questions. The Nova book has different coupling of words. it can be a negative part, so you should start work on this in detail, so that you could form the relationship of head-pair correctly.

Preparation Strategy for Quantitative

For this part you should start work on all the tips and tricks given in Barron’s and try to solve the exercise problems from Nova. you will found, the degree of questions in the main test, slightly correlating the questions of Nova. From these books some topics ware read in details that is Geometry, Probability, Permutations & Combination, Ratio-Proportion. In the test, mostly questions can come from Geometry and probability for you. whereas In GRE test most of questions come from Geometry. Therefore remembering your basics of Geometry – Coordinate Geometry, Circles, Polygon properties, and so on.

Preparation for Analytical Writing

You don’t leave this part. And give some extra time to this part and study the AWM material given in Barron. Else, you would finished like others, in the main test, do not have an idea what questions is asked. Give a quick look on the most topics given in ETS website for AWM, then you have an idea of what kind of Essays are asked.

GRE Test Tips

  • Give the time to solve the first 10 questions, in both verbal & Quantitative sections, since these solutions would represent your scoring in the Adaptive test. In the first 10 questions answering 5 wrong and the rest of all almost correct, will yet not give a good score. But, The first 10 answer are right and then answering wrong, say, in the last five- where you will find shortage of time, would yet, at least, be okay.
  • Your Main GRE score are closely matched to your Princeton scores. Hence, give these tests only when you are ready with the preparation of all sections. Else, these tests will unnecessarily wasted.
  • Please practice essays at least 3-4, since writing in the main test surround makes you a bit nervous - it is come to me. And, Since it is the first part and you do not want to screw up.
Posted in GRE, Strategies, Test Preparation Tags: No Comments »

What are some GED test-taking tips?

Posted by Test Preparation on November 8th, 2009

Prepare physically: Get plenty of rest and eat a well-balanced meal before the test so that you will have energy and will be able to think clearly. Intense studying at the last minute probably will not help as much as having a relaxed and rested mind.

Arrive early: Be at the testing center at least 15 to 20 minutes before the starting time. Make sure you have time to find the room and to get situated. Keep in mind that many testing centers refuse to admit those who come once the Test has started. Some testing centers operate on a first come, first served basis; so you want to be sure that there is an available slot for you on the day that you’re ready to test.

Think positively: Tell yourself you will do well. If you have studied and prepared for the test, you should succeed.

Relax during the test: Take half a minute several times during the test to stretch and breathe deeply, especially if you are feeling anxious or confused.

Read the test directions carefully: Be sure you understand how to answer the questions. If you have any questions about the test or about filling in the answer form, ask before the test begins.

Know the time limit for each test: Some testing centers allow extra time, while others do not. You may be able to find out the policy of your testing center before you take the test, but always work according to the official time limit. If you have extra time, go back and check your answers.

Have a strategy for answering questions: You should read through the reading passages or look over the materials once and then answer the questions that follow. Read each question two or three times to make sure you understand it. It is best to refer back to the passage or graphic in order to confirm your answer choice. Don’t try to depend on your memory of what you have just read or seen. Some people like to guide their reading by skimming the questions before reading a passage. Use the method that works best for you.

Don’t spend a lot of time on difficult questions: If you’re not sure of an answer, go on to the next question. Answer easier questions first and then go back to the harder questions. However, when you skip a question, be sure that you have skipped the same number on your answer sheet. Although skipping difficult questions is a good strategy for making the most of your time, it is very easy to get confused and throw off your whole answer key.

Posted in Strategies, Test Preparation, Tips Tags: No Comments »

What should I know to pass the GED test?

Posted by Test Preparation on November 7th, 2009

You are tested on knowledge and skills you have acquired from life experiences, work experiences, television, radio, books, magazines, newspapers, consumer products, and advertising. Many questions will involve the roles that adults play: citizen and community member, worker, and/or family member. Many documents will be “how to” documents especially found in business settings.

In particular, keep these facts in mind about the specific tests:

  • A. Part I of the Language Arts, Writing Test requires you to recognize or correct errors, revise sentences or passages, or shift constructions in the four areas of organization, sentence structure, usage, and mechanics (capitalization, punctuation, and spelling). The types of letters and memos you would normally write are likely to be included. Informational texts from business-related documents will be used.

    In Part II you will have to write a well-developed essay on a topic familiar to most adults. You will be asked to have an audience and a purpose in mind for the essay. You will write in a real life context and adopt a role. You will be asked to generate (produce) ideas, express them clearly, organize the ideas, and connect them appropriately.

  • B. Three of the five tests - Social Studies, Science, and Language Arts, Reading - require that you answer questions based on reading passages or interpret graphs, charts, maps, cartoons, or diagrams. Developing strong reading and thinking skills is the key to succeeding on these tests.

    The Social Studies Test looks at history in terms of critical points in time and clusters (groups) of historical periods. Psychology, the science of behavior, is not a separate content area, but it is included in other social studies areas. More emphasis is placed on US & world history and civics and government.

    The Science Test is based on the National Science Education Standards (NSES). It emphasizes scientific understandings and places special emphasis on the environment and on health questions. Science educaiton focuses on the activities or ways in which people use science in their daily lives.

(more…)

Posted in Activities, Strategies, Tests Tags: No Comments »

Knowing where you stand: Scoring considerations

Posted by Test Preparation on November 6th, 2009

Okay, you know the GMAT’s format and how many questions it has and so on. But what about what’s really important to you, the crucial final score? Probably very few people take standardized tests for fun, so here’s the lowdown on scoring.

How the GMAT testers figure your score

Because the GMAT is a computer adaptive test, our verbal and quantitative scores aren’t based just on the number of questions you get right. The scores you earn are based on these three factors:

The difficulty of the questions you answer
The questions become more difficult as you continue to answer correctly, so getting tough questions means you’re doing well on the test.

The number of questions that you answer
If you don’t get to all the question in the verbal and quantitative sections, your score is reduced by the proportion of questions you didn’t answer. So if you fail to answer 5 of the 37 quantitative questions, for example, your raw score would be reduced by 13 percent and your percentile rank may to from the 90th percentile to the 75th percentile.

The number of questions you answer correctly
In addition to scoring based on how difficult the questions are, the GMAT score also reflects your ability to answer those questions correctly.

GMAT essay readers determine your analytical writing assessment (AWA) score. College and university faculty members from different disciplines read your responses to the essay prompts. Two independent readers score each of the two writing assignments separately on a scale from 1 to 6, with 6 being the top score. Your final score is the average of the scores from each of the readers for each of the essays.

Posted in Strategies Tags: No Comments »

Understanding the computerized format

Posted by Test Preparation on November 5th, 2009

The GMAT can be taken only as a computer-adaptive test (CAT). The CAT adapts to your ability level by presenting you with questions of various difficulty, depending on how you answer previous questions. If you’re answering many questions correctly, the computer gives you harder questions as it seeks to find the limits of your impressive intellect. If you’re having a tough day and many of your answers are wrong, the computer will present you with easier questions as it seeks to find the correct level of difficulty for you.

With the CAT format, your score isn’t based solely on how many questions you get right and wrong but rather on the average difficulty of the questions. You could miss several questions and still get a very high score, so long as the questions you missed were among the most difficult available in the bank of questions. At the end of each section, the computer scores you based on your level of ability.

Answering in an orderly fashion
With the CAT format, the question order in the verbal and quantitative sections is different from the order on paper exams that have a test booklet and answer sheet. On the CAT, the first ten questions of the test are preselected for you, and the order of subsequent questions depends on how well you’ve answered the previous questions. So if you do well on the first ten questions, question 11 will reflect your success by being more challenging. If you do poorly on the initial questions, you’ll get an easier question 11. The program continues to take all previous questions into account as it feeds you question after question.

Perhaps the most important difference of the CAT format is that because each question is based on your answers to previous questions, you can’t go back to any question. You must answer each question as it comes. After you confirm your answer, it’s final. If you realize three questions later that you made a mistake, try not to worry about it. After all, your score is based on not only your number of right and wrong answers but also the difficulty of the questions.

Observing time limits
Both the verbal and quantitative sections have a 75 minute time limit. Because the quantitative section has 37 questions, you have about two minutes to master each question. The verbal section has 41 questions, so you have a little less time to ponder those, about a minute and three quarters per question. You don’t have unlimited time in the analytical writing section either; you have to write each of the two essays within 30 minutes, for a total of 60 minutes spent on analytical writing.

These time limits have important implications for your test strategy. Your GMAT score depends on the number of questions you’re able to ansewr. If you run out of time and leave questions unanswered at the end of a section, you’ll essentially reduce your score by the number of questions you don’t answer.

Honing your computer skills for the GMAT
Technically challenged, take heart. You need to have only minimal computer skills to take the CAT format of the GMAT test. In fact, the skills you need for the test are far less than those you’ll need while pursuing an MBA! Because you have to type your essays, you need basic word-processing skills. For the multiple-choice sections, you need to know how to select answers using either the mouse or the keyboard. That’s it for the computer skills you need to take the GMAT.

Posted in Strategies Tags: No Comments »

Forming first impressions: The format of the GMAT

Posted by Test Preparation on November 4th, 2009

The GMAT is a standardized test, and by now in your academic career, you’re probably familiar with what that means: lots of questions to answer in a short period of time, no way to cram for or memorize answers, and very little chance of scoring one hundred percent. The skills tested on the GMAT are those that leading business schools have decided are important for MBA students: verbal, quantitative, and analytical writing.

Getting familiar with what the GMAT tests

Stadardized tests are supposed to test your academic potential, not your knowledge of specific subjects. The GMAT focuses on the areas that admissions committees have found to be relevant to MBA programs. The following sections are an introduction to the three GMAT sections:

Demonstrating your writing ability
You type two original analytical writing samples during the GMAT. The test gives you thirty minutes to compose and type each of the essays. One of the samples asks you to analyze an issue, and the other presents you with an argument to analyze. You’re expected to write these essays in standard written English. Although you won’t know exactly the nature of the issue and argument you’ll get on test day, examining previous topics gives you adequate preparation for the types of topics you’re bound to see.

The readers of your GMAT essay score you based on the overall quality of your ideas and your ability to organize, develop, express, and support those ideas.

Validating your verbal skills
The GMAT verbal sections consists of 41 questions of three general types: the ubiquitous reading comprehension problem, sentence correction questions, and critical reasoning questions. Reading comprehension requires you to answer questions about written passages on a number of different subjects. Sentence correction questions test your ability to spot and correct writing errors. Critical reasoning questions require you to analyze logical arguments and understand how to strengthen or weaken or weaken those arguments.

Quizzing your quantitative skills
The quantitative section is pretty similar to most standardized math sections except that it presents you with a different question format and tests your knowledge of statistics and probability. In the 37-questions section, the GMAT tests your knowledge of arithmetic, algebra, geometry and data interpretation with standard problem-solving questions. You’ll have to solve problems and choose the correct answer from five possible choices.

Additionally, GMAT data sufficiency questions present you with two statements and ask you to decide whether the problem can be solved by using the information provided by just the first statement, just the second statement, both statements, or neither statement.

Posted in Strategies Tags: , No Comments »

Timing the GMAT test perfectly: When to take the GMAT & what to bring

Posted by Test Preparation on November 2nd, 2009

Which MBA programs to apply to isn’t the only decision you have to make. After you’ve figured out where you want to go, you have to make plans for the GMAT. You need to determine when’s the best time to take the test and what you should bring with you when you do.

When to register for and take the GMAT

When’s the best time to take the GMAT? With the computerized test, this questions has become more interesting. When the exam was a paper-and-pencil format with a test booklet and an answer sheet full of bubbles, you had a very limited choice of possible test dates - about one every two months. Now you’ve got much more flexibility when choosing the date and time for taking the test. You can choose just about any time to sit down and click answer choices with your mouse.

Registering when you’re ready

The first step in the GMAT registration process is scheduling an appointment, but don’t put off making this appointment the way you’d put off calling the dentist (even though you probably would like to avoid both!) Depending on the time of year, appointment times can go quickly. Usually, you have to wait at least a month for an open time. To determine what’s available, you can go to the official GMAT web site www.mba.com and select “Take the GMAT.” From there, you can choose a testing location and find out what dates and times are available at that location. When you find a date and time you like, you can register online, over the phone, or by mail or fax.

The best time to take the GMAT is after you’ve had about four to six weeks of quality study time and during a period when you don’t have a lot of other things going on to distract you. Of course, if your MBA program application is due in four weeks, put off your books and schedule an appointment right away! If you have more flexibility, you should still plan to take the GMAT as soon as you think you’ve studied sufficiently. All of the following circumstances warrant taking the GMAT as soon as you can: (more…)

Posted in Strategies, Test Preparation, Tips Tags: No Comments »

GED: Top 10 strategies to raise your score

Posted by Test Preparation on October 29th, 2009

When it comes to taking the GED (General Education Development), some test-taking skills will do you more good than others. Here are our picks for the top 10 ways to raise your score.

  1. Get to the test center early.
    Make sure you give yourself plenty of extra time to get there.
  2. Listen to the test monitors and follow their instructions carefully.
  3. Read every word of the instructions. Read every word of every question.
  4. Mark your answers by completely darkening the answer space of your choice.
  5. Mark only ONE answer for each question, even if you think that more than one answer is correct. You must choose only one. If you mark more than one answer, the scoring machine will consider you wrong.
  6. If you change your mind, completely erase your initial choice.
    Leave no doubt as to which answer you intend.
  7. Check often to be sure that the question number matches the answer space, that you haven’t skipped a space by mistake.
  8. Stay alert.
    Be careful not to mark a wrong answer just because you weren’t concentrating.
  9. Don’t panic.
    If you cannot finish a part before time is up, don’t worry. Do not let your performance on any part affect your performance on any other part.
  10. Check and recheck, time permitting.
    If you finish a part before time is up, use the remaining time to check that each question is answered in the right space and that there is only one answer for each question. Return to the questions you found difficult and rethink them.
Posted in Strategies, Test Preparation, Tips Tags: No Comments »

  • Featured Video

  • eLearning & Online Learning Blogs - BlogCatalog Blog Directory

  • Sponsors