• eu- is a Greek root, meaning “good”
• -thanasia is derived from the Greek “Thanatos” who was the god
of death.
Therefore, the complete word means “good death”, which is what we
know. Now, say you come across the word thanatophobic. Chances
are that you have not seen this word before. No need to panic ! Roots
will always help you out:
• We know that thanato- refers to “death”.
• Everyone knows (or should know) that -phobic means “someone
afraid of something”.
Therefore, this adjective refers to someone afraid of dying. Voila !
A very good book which emphasizes learning the roots of words is
Word Power Made Easy by Norman Lewis [9].
(b) Flash Cards: Another very popular and effective method is using
flash cards for writing down words and their meanings. I used flash
cards to write down not only the different meanings but also examples
of usage for particularly difficult words. I went through them
every night and every morning.
(c) Read, Read and Read: I know that most people begin GRE preparations
with a short window of time but if you are smart enough
to be starting a year or 2 years early, the one thing that I cannot
stress enough is the importance of reading. It may be newspapers or
periodicals, sports or automotive magazines, fiction novels. classic
literature or anything else with a relatively richer vocabulary that
you enjoy reading. Just reading will not help you prepare, however.
The point is that anytime you come across a word that you have not
seen before or do not remember, look it up right there and then in
the dictionary and enter it on a flash card along with the usage. At
the end of the day, force yourself to write a paragraph in which you
use every new word that you came across today. This turned out to
be very useful for me.
(d) Practice Makes Perfect: For certain questions like Reading Comprehension
exercises, all of the above will certainly help you but you
must keep practicing. You know what else helps with RCs? General
Reading !! If you are able to read, say, today’s editorial and understand
the premise behind and also the arguments the author makes
to support or disprove that premise, you will have no problems with
these kind of questions.
12. How do I decide on the list of universities to which I have to
send the GRE scores at the end of the test ?
Do not, by any means, consider this as a casual exercise. Ideally, you
should have already decided on your list of universities before you take
the GRE and so you can choose 4 from that list. However, we know that
since GRE scores are a big factor in selecting the universities, most people
do not have such a list. The straightforward solution is to have multiple
lists. Make 3 lists of universities - one that you really want to apply to
provided you get a great GRE score, one that you will apply to if you get
average scores and the last fall back list which you use only if you screw
up the test very badly. The US News and PhDs.org rankings explained
above should be instrumental in helping you create these 3 lists. Doing it
this way means extra work but it also means that you use test fees more
efficiently by applying to the right universities.
13. I did not do as well on the GRE I had expected. Should I retake
the test or apply with my current scores ?
This is a tricky question. Assuming you can afford to retake the test
and the dates are available, there are a couple of other criteria that you
should keep in mind when making this decision:
(a) Do you have enough time ?
If the first time you took your GRE was already kind of cutting it
close (late October or so), you will have little time to do any more
substantial preparation.
(b) Will it help ?
If the reason your first test did not go so well was because of poor
time management or factors other than lack of preparation, retaking
the test might make more sense. However, you should take steps to
ensure that the same factors do not appear the second time you take
the test. So, if the cause was, say, lack of time management then you
should do more practice with actual timed tests to make sure that
you figure out how to best manage those precious minutes. If it was
silly mathematical mistakes, practicing will help there as well.
14. If I decide to take the test again, which scores will be reported ?
The official ETS policy [11] is to report all the scores that you have obtained in the past 5 years. Not the best of the bunch and certainly not
the average. Of course, the university you are applying to might have its
own policy on how to normalize scores for students who have taken the
test more than once and these policies are not known. If I had to guess, I
would say that they would consider the latest scores as the official ones.
.
Feedback
I would appreciate any feedback on this document at the email provided above.
References
[1] Graduate Record Examination,
http://www.gre.org
[2] Graduate Record Examination,
http://www.ets.org
[3] GRE General Test,
http://www.gre.org/gendir.html#general
[4] GRE General Test,
http://www.gre.org/pbstest.html#description
[5] US News & World Report, Graduate School Rankings,
http://www.
usnews.com/usnews/edu/grad/rankings/rankindex brief.php.
[6] Rankings based on National Research Council data,
http://www.phds.
org/rankings
[7] National Research Council,
http://www.nationalacademies.org/nrc/
12
[8] The Fulbright Commission in India,
http://www.fulbright-india.org/
eas/eas-general.htm
[9] Word Power Made Easy, Norman Lewis,
http://www.amazon.com/exec/
obidos/tg/detail/-/067174190X/002-9851277-6608034?v=glance
[10] admission 2006 GRE US Yahoo! Group,
http://groups.yahoo.com/
group/admission 2006 GRE US/
[11] GRE Cumulative Reporting Policy,
http://www.gre.org/getscore.
html#cumulative
[12] gre-toefl-tse Yahoo! Group,
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/
gre-toefl-tse/
