Here are the free GRE events we’re holding this week.

9/4/12 – New York City – Free Trial Class – 6:30-9:30 PM

9/5/12 – Berkeley, CA – Free Trial Class – 6:30-9:30 PM

9/5/12 – Washington, D.C. – Free Trial Class – 6:30-9:30 PM

9/9/12 – Boston – Free Trial Class – 5:30-8:30 PM

Looking for more free events? Check out our Free Events Listings Page.

We are launching a new GRE workshop called Thursdays with Jen and we would like to invite you to attend. Every other Thursday, join MGRE instructor Jennifer Dziura for an hour and a half study session. Regular readers of the blog will probably recognize Jen as the contributor of many of our blog articles. In fact, Jen is our Blog Editor and Lead Content Developer, and the instructor of our first-ever GRE classes.

In these special Live Online sessions, open to the public as well as current students, Jennifer will conduct mini workshops on a few different GRE-related topics. Both the verbal and quant sections of the GRE will be covered.

If you can’t attend the session, don’t worry. A copy of the recording will be made available the following Monday. You can sign up for an upcoming session, or find recordings of past sessions, here: //www.manhattanprep.com/gre/thursdays-with-jen.cfm

Each session will deal with new GRE topics. To suggest a topic or ask a question for next time, email Jen at jdziura@manhattanprep.com. We hope to see you this Thursday for the workshop!

As we’ve mentioned before, the GRE testing center can be a stressful place. Showing up for the GRE is much like arriving at the airport. You will have to empty your pockets, present a photo ID, and maybe even go through a metal detector. Sometimes, students make the mistake of preparing for the test content without ever considering the test experience. To help you prepare for the full experience, we’ve put together this list of testing center dos and don’ts.

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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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As 2011 draws to a close, we thought it best to take a look back at the year. 2011 was a big year here at Manhattan GRE. On August, 1st the Revised GRE came out, and in preparation for that change we released our 2nd edition strategy guides. We also revamped our website and unveiled a new logo. With all of these changes going on we got a lot more student questions than normal, so I thought I’d recap some of the questions our students asked most often this past year.

1. What is the new 1000?

On the old GRE scale (400-1600) the score of 1000 was commonly thrown around as a cutoff score below which your chances of graduate school acceptance were severely impeded. Based on our research this score cutoff was something of a myth, but it was very widely believed. Sure, certain schools asked for it, but in reality, 1000 just sounded like a nice number and didn’t really say much about an applicant’s ability level. (For instance, a perfect 800 quant score and the worst possible verbal score of 200 added up to 1000, the same way two 500s do, but those candidates would be extremely different.)

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Manhattan GRE’s three-day boot camp is a program designed for students who have strong math backgrounds and/or have been studying for the GRE for at least 1 month. Taught by top-notch teachers and built on content-based learning, class sessions are interactive and challenging, building students’ proficiency and confidence for every question type on the exam.

The course includes a complete set of our 8 Strategy Guides, plus access to 6 online practice exams.

Course Details
Date: Friday, November 18th – Sunday, November 20th
Location: 138 W. 25th St (our NYC center)
Price: $590

Detailed Schedule
11/18 – 3 hour session 5:30PM – 8:30 PM Online
11/19 – 3.75 hour Online Practice Exam 10am-1:45pm (online or in our center, space permitting)
11/19 – 3.5 Hour Session 2:30 PM – 6:00 PM
11/20 – 3.75 hour Online Practice Exam 10am-1:45pm (online or in our center, space permitting)
11/20 – 3.5 Hour Session 2:30 PM – 6:00 PM

Please note: The session on Friday November 18th will be held in a Live Online classroom. Saturday and Sunday sessions will be held at the Manhattan GRE center (138 W 25th Street, New York, NY 10001). Student should also set aside time to take two 3 hour and 45 minute practice exams, one prior to each of the two in-person sessions. These tests can be taken at home or in Manhattan GRE’s testing center (testing center availability limited).

Meet the Instructor

Jennifer Dziura is Manhattan GRE’s Blog Editor and Lead Content Developer. She has scored perfectly on the GRE twice, has written or contributed to more than 10 published test prep books, and is the author of Manhattan GRE’s 500 Essential Words and 500 Advanced Words flashcard sets. In her M.S. in Education program, she worked on projects relating to using research into the brain to decrease stress and enhance learning and memory. She has helped over 2,000 people master the content for the GRE and other exams. Jennifer uses her obviously copious spare time to co-host an adult spelling bee.

Note: Images are from our favorite boot camp movie, GI Jane. Actual GRE bootcamp looks more like this (no pushups!)

Sign Up Here

It’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for. Scores from August administrations of the Revised GRE are now available online!

A few days ago, we reported that ETS had started to convert Old GRE scores to the new scale and we started to speculate about when the new scores would arrive. Apparently, they were right around the corner.
Yesterday, ETS released a table containing the percentile ranks for the new scale. Today, they followed up by releasing the first batch of Revised GRE scores nearly a week ahead of schedule. But what does it all mean?

1. The percentiles make more sense – ETS has done a pretty good job of pinning the 50th percentile right around the middle of the score range at roughly 151 for Verbal and 149 for Quant. From there, the scores are roughly patterned after a normal distribution. The extremely skewed percentiles of the old GRE are a thing of the past.
2. Verbal is still the tougher section of the two, but the math is harder than it used to be – The high end of the verbal scale still indicates that Verbal is the more challenging of the two sections; either a 169 or 170 on Verbal will land in you in the 99th percentile, while only a perfect 170 will do so for quant. However, the math is no cakewalk. A perfect score on the old GRE would land you only a 166 on the new scale. ETS has made good on its promise to make the math more difficult (this will help them challenge the GMAT in terms of B-School relevance).
3. 750-800 Math estimates can end up all over the place – 750-800 was the best quant estimate that you could get on the revised GRE, but today that range can mean a score as low as the 85 percentile (based on scores we have heard so far). The fact that a range of 6 score values on the old test (750, 760, 770, 780, 790, 800) translates to at least 10 different score values on the new test (162, 163, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170) shows just how out of whack the old quant scale was. Unfortunately, it also means that receiving a 750-800 estimate on your quant doesn’t tell you much about what your official score will actually be.

These are our big takeaways from today’s data. It is still a small sample and we will no doubt be updating you as further information trickles in. As I have previously mentioned, Manhattan GRE will be in attendance at the ETS score explanation webinars coming up in two weeks. We will be sure to report everything that we learn there as soon as we learn it. If you’d like to share what your scores estimates turned into today, please email us at studentservices@manhattanprep.com/gre/.