<p>How the hell do international students get such high scores on the verbal? I always hear about people, particularly asians getting 800s on the verbal. Do they just sit down and memorize the dictionary? What is the point of doing that? Honestly, it seems like the verbal section test is how will you can bs a test and forget every single word you spent weeks prior to the test remembering solely for the test. I'm kinda ranting because it's a joke, I don't understand what it even tests. Anyone can memorize thousands of words, but not everyone chooses to because some, like my think it's a complete waste of time just to memorize words for a test. Why do the test writers even write tests like this that don't actually test you on your intellect, but on memorization.</p>
<p>Cheating, bro. But don’t worry international students are judged much more difficultly. All else being equal, I’d rather be the American w/ 500 than the Chinese or Indian w/ 800. Besides, they’ve failed to memorize the most important dictionary of them all: URBAN DICTIONARY!! :D</p>
<p>I’m international student myself, and I can say not all of them get 800 on verbal. There is no relation of being international student and guarantees 800 verbal. You just met someone who spend humongous effort, maybe he memorized the entire 10k word and practiced in Kaplan test prep for 1 year.</p>
<p>People who study hard for GRE will get 800 international or not. It’s the same with everyone else. Nothing weird with that.</p>
<p>@vitiatethis, after raising the same point with denizen in another thread, I have since learned that cheating is quite common abroad. basically you can either bribe test giving officials or you can obtain a list of current questions from people who just took the GRE. </p>
<p>I am also an international but go to school in the US so I hope I won’t get lumped into the same group.</p>
<p>
I have a feeling that the old verbal section was meant to measure how well-read an applicant was. Rather than test specific pieces of literature, they decided to test us on vocab that we would encounter across a spectrum of literature but not in everyday life.</p>
<p>For what it’s worth, all of my well-read friends scored extremely well on the verbal section without much preparation.</p>
<p>Verbal isn’t hard. It seems a lot of people don’t even study for it and can easily get 500+. I’ve noticed this among people who are applying for technical degrees that only look at quantitative. I think international students study a lot more for it than domestic because it’s a bigger challenge for them. In fact, the last time I checked if you got a 720 or higher, you’re in the 99th percentile, compared to the 94th percentile for a perfect quant score.</p>
<p>The verbal gre tests your understanding of “vocabulary words”. It is a useful - if limited - predictor of success if you are a humanities or social science student.
I’m an international student. I scored 740 (after a fair bit of prep), which I thought was a fair reflection of both my English language skills and my capacity to work with jargon hah</p>
<p>@orwellfan and OP, its true all the test has to do is be a good predictor of grad school success WHILE distributing students onto a bell curve. If an understanding of penguins predicted grad school success then the GRE would be about penguins. Unfortunately the GRE sucks at that, thats why it changed. Too bad there is no competition in this market.</p>