Wed, 26 Oct 1994 09:48:34 -0700 for by KUHUB.CC.UKANS.EDU (PMDF V4.3-11 #5489) id <01HIQBYLP3S09EQIFF@KUHUB.CC.UKANS.EDU>; Wed, 26 Oct 1994 11:48:28 -0500 (CDT) Date: Wed, 26 Oct 1994 11:48:28 -0500 (CDT) Date-warning: Date header was inserted by KUHUB.CC.UKANS.EDU From: 1k1mgm@KUHUB.CC.UKANS.EDU (Christopher Gunn) Subject: Re: GRE on computer To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU Eric Strayer (estrayer@cats.ucsc.edu) wrote: >This forum sounds mostly like well seasoned >grad students, but in the off chance that >there are some newbies or undergrads out there, >I'd like to know if anyone has experience with >the Cliffnotes GRE prep on disk for Windows/DOS. It has an extremely annoying 'look up and type in a long number' form of 'copy discouragement,' like some game programs. I picked up a copy at Best Buy for $19 or something, to see if I could figure out whether my neurons had decayed much since I last took the GRE (1977 or something!), but the prospect of getting mad each time I cranked up the program has deterred me from using it. (I despise copy protection and its allies for both practical and principled reasons.) Also, the user interface seems pretty crude ('WordStar-like' is the term that comes to mind), but keep in mind that I'm a dedicated Mac-ite and spoiled about things like that. There's a Princeton Review computer-based GRE drill program that looked better to me when I examined the box, but I don't know about copy-protection or user-interface issues with it (except that the possibly-deceptive screen pictures on the box looked better than Cliff's), nor anything about the underlying qualities of the program. It did claim to have drill for the adaptive-test mode of the computer GRE (see below). >I really need to get this damned thing out of the >way and I feel safer behind a keyboard than a pencil, >so maybe I'll do better pretesting as well as taking >GRE on computer. Be careful. If you have convenient access to Usenet, you might check out the newsgroups soc.college.grad soc.college.gradinfo where this gets discussed all the time. The general conclusion is that the computer-based test is harder, since (a) you can't go back and re-think questions after answering other, easier ones; (b) you can't view all of a problem (or reading or whatever) all at once, in some cases; (c) you have to transfer figures to paper to manipulate them (for math, logic problems, etc.), and (d) that the adaptive, test-to-failure approach of *part* (not yet all) of the computer-based GRE is harder to 'crack' than the paper-and-pencil version. But there is a small but highly vocal minority that swears the computer GRE is easier, primarily because of a vastly-superior test-taking environment. Kit Gunn, Univ. of Kansas Christopher Gunn Molecular Graphics and Modeling Laboratory 1k1mgm@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu University of Kansas Phone: 913-864-4428 or -4495 Malott Hall Lawrence, KS 66045