<p>I just took GRE today. It seemed like my prep for Verbal has been useless. It was more difficult than I anticipated. </p>
<p>Verbal : 320
Quant: 590
AWA: Pending</p>
<p>I got a Master by coursework from a good and well known Australian uni (Uni of Town).
I'm thinking of enrolling in a research degree in either CAN, US, and New Zealand.
I submitted my scores to
New Zealand->University of Auckland, Massey University
Canada-> Queen's University, Concordia University</p>
<p>I understand that uni in NZ do not require GRE but I think it'd help in some way.
Do you think Queen's U and Concordia U will accept my application if I apply for their Master by research programs?
My major field is organization study but I'm thinking of switching into real estate appraisal.</p>
<p>That is too low for any grad programs, especially by a native English speaker. Is English your first language? If so, study again. If not, what is yout TOEFL?</p>
<p>I am NOT a native speaker and I also can converse in French and Japanese which means my memory is lower than people who can converse in only 1-2 language (like a computer which runs Windows, MacOSX, Linux, and Unix simultaneously… its performance must be lower than a computer which runs only Windows per se). I also have DELF B1 for french and JLPT4 for Japanese. I went to Australia from 2004-2005 (20 months only).
Some schools say they don’t need TOEFL because my degree was completed in Australia.
However, I got CBT TOEFL 253/300, TWE 5.5 in 2004 and I used that for my Australian Uni application.</p>
<p>This year I took IELTS and I got Listening 7.5/9, Reading 7/9, Writing 7.5/9, and Speaking 7.5/9. </p>
<p>For verbal parts, I actually blind guessed on all reading comprehension questions because I wasted too much time on analogy, antonym, and sentence completion. I blinded guessed for about 10-12 out of 30 questions!! I think these questions do not make sense because none of us would do such thing as analogy and antonym in graduate schools. </p>
<p>-I heard that some U.S. schools like U.TexasAM at Kingsville and California State at Chico, U.of Wyoming, and Kansas State Uni accept this score?
-What about Canada? </p>
<p>I don’t want to take it again and I will explain my 4 language capability is SOP.</p>
<p>No, it’s more to do with how well a brain can comprehend more than one languages. There was a discussion recently in Parent Cafe about raising kids multi-lingual. Parents of kids who are multi-lingual said that they’ve found that their kids were struggling with English- their brains, while can multi-task in different languages, have trouble picking more vocabulary. For example, while a kid can spend 3 years improving his native English skills, his counterpart, who learns two languages in addition to English, can only take so much for capacity in order to handle learning 3 different languages at once. It’s not necessarily a memory thing but more a language processing thing.</p>
<p>OP, you may want to discuss your thoughts with a graduate admissions director at a program and see what they say. Doing well on the GRE verbal is a question of vocabulary learning and knowing how to be precise with the answers.</p>
<p>I’m sorry that I’m prettu harsh here. I think you just have to suck up your pride and just admit that your performance on the GRE was terrible and you need to retake the test. I’m bilingual (neither is English) and in addition to my two native languages I’m fluent in English and almost fluent in French and German, so your “lower memory” nonsense would apply to me quite perfectly.</p>
<p>I didn’t even go to uni in English and got Q800/V620 on the GRE. My field has zero to do with languages and writing as I’m doing a Ph.D. in math. I do admit that being bilingual had its drawbacks in terms of breadth of vocabulary in my native languages, because I would go to school in one of my native languages while some of my hobbies were in the other language. The end result would be that my vocabulary for certain things was much stronger in one of the two languages and which language it was would depend on the subject. </p>
<p>Now the fact that I’m bilingual has zero effect on my command of English. Learning vocabulary of a foreign language would actually be easier, because I had two languages to which I could translate words which made them easier to remember. Some English words would even lack a word in one of my native languages e.g. arrogate. The fact that you know a few languages would thus make me expect a <em>better</em> score on the verbal.</p>
<p>What I’m trying to say is that you screwed up the GRE and there’s no point in blaming something/someone else for it. Trying to explain your performance to the admission committee of any university with the explanations you have given here will just make things worse. At least I would dismiss your explanation totally and think you’re someone who just won’t admit their own shortcomings.</p>
<p>I’ll chip in on the language bit. English is my second language, which is in addition to my native language and 2 dialects I speak. Having lived in Hong Kong for the better part of my life for 9 years, it was an uphill battle to get my English up to speed. The key was to fully immerse myself in an English speaking environment, and insist on using English whenever possible, much to the chagrin of my parents and some of my friends (they thought I was being a linguistic snob). I eventually caught up, and managed 630V on the GRE.</p>
<p>I agree with what eof said, you definitely botched this one. Just let it slide (I know how hard this can be, I’m still mourning over my 760Q…), figure out what went wrong (do you have text anxiety?), and work on your weaknesses. I’m no good at memorizing, so I semi-gave up on the vocab bit. Instead I focused on nailing all the RC and SC questions, and that really helped boost my score. On the real thing I only had 2 or 3 vocab appear anyway, so couldn’t have made much of a difference.</p>
<p>It seems like there is no reply which answers my question on what uni in CAN accepts my GRE score… Anyway, I will not retake it since practicing with Powerprep and Kaplan at my home shows similar score. I think I will wait until 2011 when the analogy and antonym questions are removed. I’m working on a contract now and I still have to complete my assignments for another year so I would not apply for any graduate schools soon.</p>
<p>FYI, my native Asian language and Japanese are totally different from French and German in the sense that grammar and words are NOT derived from Latin. Knowing French and German will improve your GRE Verbal because they share some roots with English words. In contrast, knowing Japanese and my native will NOT help anything.</p>
<p>What if my AWA turns out to be 5 or 5.5? Will that offset low scores in V and Q?</p>
<p>“For example, while a kid can spend 3 years improving his native English skills, his counterpart, who learns two languages in addition to English, can only take so much for capacity in order to handle learning 3 different languages at once. It’s not necessarily a memory thing but more a language processing thing.”</p>
<p>Oh? Fascinating.</p>
<p>We’re talking about “kids” as in infants, toddlers, and young children right? Or does this apply also to young adults, college aged “kids,” learning multiple languages at once?</p>
<p>dprograms: My native languages are NOT related to English, so they give me no help. I could say that in my case the fact that I had to learn the basic vocabulary for three languages was not helping with the verbal. You’re still searching for an excuse.</p>
<p>The right approach is to simply spend 15 minutes a day studying vocabulary and do it NOW. You can download some flashcard program for your computer (e.g. Anki), read an English newspaper every day and underline words you don’t understand and look them up. Add them to your program and use the program daily. I did something similar for all the languages I studied while I was in high school and it helped me increase my vocabulary.</p>
<p>I am not saying that I don’t admit that I have Low GRE scores. I just articulate a few reasons which may explain why I have low scores. I did study all the vocabs and I won’t do it again…
:p</p>
<p>dprograms, it’s not JUST the vocab, it’s strategy and knowledge of roots as well. Did you take your time to read over the explanations for the answers for those that you got wrong or lucky on? It’s all practice, practice, practice too. Did you guess blindly at words you didn’t know at first sight without trying to take apart the word to find roots?</p>
<p>Try to re-take GRE. Spend another 4 to 6 months for GRE Prep. Re-taking GRE in next 2 months time will not improve your score.</p>
<p>1) Now you know your weak area
2) Take lots of practice test in your weak areas.
3) Learn new strategies to solve problems.
4) Improve your GRE Verbal Words
5) Try to spend 2 hours per day in prep.</p>
<p>Even for a non-native speaker, 320 is too low. That evidences a lack of comprehension.</p>
<p>Also, that memory processing thing is false. KIds who learn two languages at once may struggle because they have a difficult time keeping the phonemes of two different languages separate, but it’s not because they have trouble picking up more vocabulary. It’s more of a categorization/brain organization issue than a memorization issue. There’s no limited capacity in the brain for language learning.</p>
<p>Even your blind guessing on 10 questions wouldn’t account for a verbal score that low on the GRE. You need to retake for the Canadian and the U.S. schools (those U.S. schools won’t take a verbal score that low - even the lower-tier graduate programs in the U.S. are going to want at least a 450 if not a 500 on the verbal section).</p>
<p>OP, try freerice.com or number2.com as GRE prep resources - they are free. You may find that you need to do some foundational English work to improve your score (like learning Greek and Latin roots, which can be helpful). Also, as happyschoolsblog already said, learn what your weaknesses are (is it analogies? Antonyms? What’s hardest for you?) and work on those intensively.</p>
<p>Thank you for all comments above anyway. I just log in the ViewScore Online and no information on scores are displayed… don’t know why. Perhaps it’s not been 14 days yet.
Anyway, I forgot to tell you that I was researched the new Verbal Format at the end of my test. There were 23 questions instead of 28 questions and I really prefer it to the current Verbal format. I think I will retake the new revised GRE next year but not now for I’m relocating to Auckland… will see how I like it. If I like it, I might not even retake GRE since either U.Auckland or AUT require GRE. They just need great SOP and research proposals. </p>
<p>I recalled that when I was at the 22nd question ,the CAT which should assign easy questions for me already gave me an antonym question which asks for the antonym of “RILE”… and… I don’t know… That’s why it’s 320 anyway so low … around 13 percentile.</p>
That’s why it’s 320 anyway so low … around 13 percentile.</p>