GRE/MAT & Graduate School Blog

COVID-19 has made taking in-person standardized tests such as the GRE impossible indefinitely across much of the world. Just in the past week Pearson Vue, the largest testing center company in the U.S., announced that all of their centers country-wide are closed until at least April 16. In response to these circumstances, beginning March 23, the Educational Testing Service (ETS) is at least temporarily offering a “GRE General Test at Home” for test takers in several nations including the U.S., Canada, and Hong Kong.

A high GRE Analytical Writing score won’t help you get admitted to a top graduate program, but a below average score can keep you out of one.

The Analytical Writing measure assesses critical thinking and analytical writing capabilities. It evaluates your ability to communicate and support complicated ideas, design and test arguments, and engage in a clear and intelligible discussion of an issue. It doesn’t assess how much you know about a specific topic.

In this continuation of our MAT review video series, we approach working through a standard MAT style analogy that tests your grammar mastery. 

Grammar may be something you wanted to avoid by taking the MAT instead of the ACT, SAT, or GMAT. But the way that the MAT tests grammar is based on the relationships between punctuation marks and what they actually indicate from a definition standpoint, rather than sentence completion as seen on the GMAT.

In this continuation of our MAT review video series, we approach working through a standard MAT style Analogy via a technique using the “Pivot Term.”

A “Pivot term” is a term that cannot relate to the blank in the analogy; it helps you correctly determine the relationship between the given terms in the original analogy before evaluating answer choices. It’s imperative to identify this relationship before looking to the answer choices, as you will be better able to narrow your focus to pair the blank to one term vs. anything in the list of choices.

Should I take the GRE or the GMAT?

It’s an increasingly common question given the growing acceptance of the GRE. 10 years ago, very few MBA programs accepted the GRE as part of their admissions requirements. 5 years ago, a growing number of schools accepted the GRE in theory, but it was still a clear minority of students who were in fact applying to MBA programs with a GRE score instead of a GMAT score.

Master’s degrees are becoming increasingly common, and it’s not hard to see why. In some fields, an advanced degree is necessary for even entry-level jobs, and for others, like STEM fields, it can mean an even higher salary, more and better prospects and more exciting work. But, it’s also not hard to see why many professionals are reluctant to take the plunge into traditional graduate school. Doing so means leaving the workforce, moving to a new city and going into tens of thousands of dollars of debt.

This is the first in a multipart series on how to go about studying for the GRE or GMAT. We don’t plan on going into detail on specific concepts covered on the GRE or specific test-taking strategies in this series. Instead, the intention is to cover higher level, foundational issues around preparing for these exams, such as what type of support to get, what materials to use, what mindset to cultivate, etc. This article is being posted on our GRE blog, but we’ll switch from GRE to GMAT over time, as the concepts are broadly applicable to both exams.

In this continuation of our MAT review video series we discuss a slightly different and generally considered to be trickier type of analogy tested on the MAT.

One of the slightly more complex question types on the Miller Analogies Test involves needing to recognize changes in the literal letters in the words used in the analogy instead of analyzing a more typical contextual or meaning-based analogy. These types of analogies can be particularly tricky, because if you are not aware that they happen, it's possible to fall into what Stefan describes as some "cleverly laid" traps hiding in the answer choices.

Here are some key takeaway from this MAT analogies video:

1. Start by understanding accepted analogies (e.g., you can't relate word B to C)
2. Identify the pivot term in the analogy
3. Recognize MAT analogy relationships can be based on letters or rhyme, not always context. 
4. Words that are "kind of" or "sort of" alike is generally not specific enough for an acceptable MAT analogy
5. Avoid clever traps (e.g., the relationship trap, where you focus on one relationship between two words that doesn't exist between the other two words)

This video was produced by MyGuru Director of Online Instruction and expert online MAT tutor Stefan Maisnier. Visit our YouTube channel for more MAT analogy videos.

There are two games you must win if you want to score well on the GRE. The first is what I call the “outer” game. It consists of the how-to’s for getting right answers — the x’s and o’s, if you will — including math concepts, vocabulary, formulas, strategic elimination strategies, time management, and other such tangible applications. The outer game is where GRE students spend most of their time, and it’s what our online GRE prep courses do such a great job of teaching.

There is certainly a lot of content you must master to earn a high score on the GRE. Your mathematics, verbal reasoning, reading comprehension, and writing skills will be tested and obviously are key to earning a 90^thpercentile GRE score (or better).