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Ask HN: Is GRE useful outside graduate school?

1 points by kailashbadu ↗ HN
Having finished Bachelor’s degree in CS and subsequently worked as a professional programmer for 3 years, I am finally considering going to the graduate school. As part of the preparations I will be sitting for the GRE general test sometime in next few months. Upon reviewing and practicing the test material I realized that something is bugging me really bad.

I have heard many people disparage GRE. Their grudge is that, among a few others, much of what your study for the GRE test is not really useful in the graduate school, nor is it helpful later in your career. Now that has really started to worry me because I think I am spending more time on it then what I probably ought to.

Take vocabulary. Memorizing hundreds of abstruse words was no fun when I started. I was merely cramming . However, things started getting interesting when I actually began writing down the words, looking the meaning up in a dictionary, analyzing the usage, and applying the words in my own sentences. Of course it’s taking inordinate length of time but the experience is really enthralling and edifying.

Practicing for ‘Reading Comprehension’ lead me to the world of critical reading and writing. I began to critically read newspaper op-ed , keep an eye on the techniques that author uses to constructs the passages, and find flaws or strength in every argument he or she makes. Again it is slowing me down but I am getting engrossed. So much so that I bought an entire text book on Logic; one that teaches how to make arguments, identify fallacies, and do deductive and inductive reasoning. My interest only seems to be growing by leaps and the bounds.

Now I am worried that the amount of effort I am putting into it is just not worth it. Everything on the test preparation books too is focused only on maximizing the score on the actual GRE test day (quick tricks and tactics without deeper learning).

Can some of the things I learn for GRE can be carried over to the graduate school and the career that follows it? Should I be putting as much effort into it as I am doing now?

3 comments

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noodle
there's a lot of criticism of the GRE. people basically point out that its only good at determining who is good at taking standardized tests, since it isn't a very good predictor of graduate school success.

its just one of those things, though. not all programs weigh it heavily.

stonemetal
No, and it isn't worth much inside graduate school either. Some schools especially towards the high end have stopped using the gre and sat as qualifiers.
Tangurena
I've found similar results.

Different schools use the GRE for different things (if at all). One coworker has a phd in English. Her math skills are astonishingly bad, and the grad school that she went to looked for low math scores && high english scores: because that combination turned out to be a good predictor for them of a good performer in that particular English program.

Almost none of the things I studied in grad school were used outside of it (which has some to do with why I dropped out). And some of the things I now wish I had studied "back then" also bored me to tears back then. Examples of what bored me to tears back then: http://www.soa.org/education/exam-req/edu-fsa-req.aspx (in particular, look at the classes needed to meet education requirements called "vee" by the soa).

>Of course it’s taking inordinate length of time but the experience is really enthralling and edifying. Yep. That's oooh! shiny! in action. And I find that what's "shiny" changes a lot over time.