Here is what happened in the world of the GRE this week…

• About Graduate School Guide wrote about goal setting and new year’s resolutions.
• AOL’s Daily Finance wrote about which graduate degrees are worth the cost.
• Finally, in case you missed it, our very own Taylor Dearr wrote about three reasons to start your GRE prep in January.

Have a great weekend, everybody!

So, you made your New Year’s resolutions based on the fact that you are currently reading a GRE blog, I’m guessing that one of yours involved applying to graduate school. Let me be the first to say, excellent decision! Now what do you do?

I’ve looked at a number of online Graduate School Application Timelines, from a number of different sources, and one thing that nearly every timeline suggests, is a starting date that falls between May and September BUT WAIT! Don’t stop reading.

Yes, you could spend the next five months slogging through your Netflix instant queue waiting for those calendars to start, and you would still be able to complete you applications. However, I would recommend starting now by knocking out the GRE, and here is why.

1. Less to worry about in the fall

My biggest complaint about timelines that suggest a May-September start date is that they place Take the GRE on a single day in October. Most people, however, will spend more than one day on the GRE. Here at Manhattan GRE we recommend that students spend roughly three months on their preparation, but even students with a modest study plan will usually set aside two or three weeks to take some GRE practice tests and review their areas of weakness. Now, imagine these 2-10 weeks overlapping with the time you spend writing personals statements, requesting letters of recommendation, and refining your application. It sounds needlessly overwhelming.

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This comic from XKCD is not only hilarious, but presents a remarkably GRE-like scenario:

So, here’s a question — what is the area of the “donut” shape in which the man in the comic is legally permitted to move?

Answer the question yourself before clicking “More.”

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Each week, we post a new Challenge Problem for you to attempt. If you submit the correct answer, you will be entered into that week’s drawing for two free Manhattan Prep GRE Strategy Guides.

The pharmaceutical division’s interest on debt expense is 4 times that of the chemical division. What percent of the chemical division’s payroll expense is the pharmaceutical division’s payroll expense, rounded to the nearest whole percent?

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You may not be aware of the new GRE Diagnostic Service, available to any test takers who have already taken the Revised exam. Did you know that you can actually see how many questions you missed, the difficulty level of each question, how long you spent on each question, and the categories of the problems you missed? (You can’t see the actual questions, though).

Of course, this information is mainly helpful to those who have taken the real exam and intend to take it again. Here’s a screenshot of a small portion of my results:

Of course, we all want to avoid having to retake the real exam. One way to do that is to make sure you are practicing with serious computer-based practice exams. Studying on paper, without time limits, is just not the same!
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