After the GRE General Test started gaining traction as an alternative to the GMAT for business school admissions in the late 2000s, it soon became rather easy to find a GRE to GMAT conversion tool online. For a while, it was right on the official ETS GRE website. Applicants could plug their scores into the tool and in both directions a supposedly equivalent score would pop out.
I cannot count the number of times I've been asked by MBA candidates (and even folks considering the LSAT for law school admissions) who have for whatever reason been turned off by the GMAT - shouldn't I just take the GRE? After all, in every corner of the internet it seems that the GRE is championed as the easier exam - and why wouldn't it be?
At long last, ETS has finally converted more of their official online practice exams to the short form of the test that was launched September 22, 2023 - and it only took about four months! That said, as of today, January 22, the ets.org/gre PowerPrep practice exam purchasing website could not be more confusing.
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.
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.