Knowing the correct words and constructions is key to writing successful GRE essays, as well as statements of purpose, cover letters, and any academic and professional communications you will put forth in the future. So let’s brush up on grammar and style.

The Analytical Writing Assessment (AWA), commonly referred to as simply “the essays,” give test-takers the opportunity to demonstrate their ability to organize and convey information. The AWA also grants test-takers the chance to show off both their vocabulary and their control of language — their mastery of the finer points of English composition that, when used correctly, allow a writer to precisely articulate exactly what he or she intends.

When I was in middle school, my English teacher had a note taped to her desk that said, “Department of Redundancy Department.” This captures the ridiculousness of the repetitive repetition that is redundancy. (What?)

In your essays, don’t use adjectives with nouns that don’t need further qualification. Don’t say a special reputation, serious crisis, or passing phase. Reputations are, by definition, special, just like crises are serious and phases are short-lived.

Strong writing gets to the point; excessive qualification weakens your message. “She is sort of a slow worker” includes unnecessary qualifiers and could be reworked to read, “She is a slow worker” or, “She works slowly.”

Words that do not require qualification should not be qualified. For example, there is no such thing as “most unique.” Unique means one-of-a-kind, and there aren’t DEGREES of one-of-a-kindness. Being more unique is like being more pregnant — there is no such thing.

Words that have qualifiers “built in” also should not be saddled with adjectives. Classmates, colleagues, and playmates all include the notion of camaraderie; there is no reason to say fellow classmates. Likewise, avoid using at some point in time — unless the reader is likely to believe you meant at some point in space, the time element is understood.

More isn’t always better. Using extra descriptors tells your reader you do not have a strong command of the English language. Following these conventions will enable you to craft strong essays on Test Day. The ability to write comfortably and correctly is an asset graduate programs and employers prize!

Have a question about grammar, punctuation, usage, or style? Email me at jennifer.land@kaplan.com and put “blog question” in your subject line. Then look for a response here!

“Alright, I know how to read – what more to it can there possibly be?

“Almost all of the answer choices in the Reading Comp section seem like they could be correct – it’s hopeless…”

If you haven’t uttered one of the above statements about the GRE’s Reading Comp questions, then you are probably somewhere in the spectrum between these two attitudes of naively confident and unduly uncertain.

Indeed, you will need to know how to read – but your present activity proves that you are in check with that prerequisite…

So, testing more than just your ability to discern words from groups of letters, the GRE attempts to assess your ability to think critically and read strategically – with purpose.  Moreover, the Reading Comp passages and their corresponding questions are measuring your analytical skills as they are performed under time constraints.  Specifically, how well can you determine the best definition of a word in context?  Given detailed and dense prose, are you able to identify an author’s tone and then determine her main idea and purpose?  Rather than only partake in the inefficiency of time-intensive rereading, can you initially glean information from text and then perceive ideas in such a manner as to draw accurate inferences from them?

The answer is YES, you can…but only if you learn to read in a way much differently than most folks tend to read books at the beach, differently even than the method you probably used to read text books to earn your degree.  Strategic reading is a skill and, as such, it requires methodology built around it and – here it comes – practice!

Great preparation for GRE success must include learning and practicing a device for efficiently and proficiently gathering sufficient data and intelligence from our initial read so that we can adeptly answer 1-3 questions while making only quick, referent analysis of the passage.

Far from having multiple correctly-worded answer choices (although the New GRE does now include questions, “Select all that apply” which have multiple answer choices that are correct), the traditional multiple-choice question has only one choice which is worded in such a way to be correct given the stated question.  Furthermore, the other 4 choices have serious flaws, however hidden to us those flaws may seemingly feel.  It’s NOT about feel, this task is categorical and the passage will “tell” us all that we need it to, thus allowing us to predict the right choice, if only we are well-trained and well-practiced in the scheme of skills to do so.

In my pre-Kaplan life I was a copy editor, and one of my tasks was creating style guides for the various publications I worked for.  I’m going to use this blog space to share some editorial nuggets.  Knowing the correct words and constructions is key to writing successful GRE essays, as well as statements of purpose, cover letters, and any academic and professional communications you will put forth in the future. So let’s brush up on grammar and style.

When to use which or that is an area that gives writers trouble. The distinction is really very simple, though: in American usage, if the information isn’t essential to the meaning of the sentence, use which to introduce it, and set it off with commas. Consider the following:

The car, which is an ugly shade of green, is parked illegally.

This tells us that the car about to be ticketed is unattractive. The information about the car’s color is unnecessary to the meaning of the sentence; it’s more or less an aside, a side comment. If you remove it, the sentence still makes sense: The car is parked illegally.

If there were a number of cars visible and our reader might not know which one was at risk of a parking ticket, the descriptive clause would be essential. The commas would have to go away, and if the commas are gone, the clause should be introduced by that:

The car that is an ugly shade of green is parked illegally. (You could also say, The ugly green car is parked illegally, but for this example we’ll leave it as a clause.)

The technical name for this distinction is essential vs. nonessential clauses, sometimes called restrictive vs. nonrestrictive clauses; which and that are subordinating conjunctions. The basic rule is, if the information isn’t essential to the sentence, set it in commas. If it is essential, don’t use commas. And if it’s not in commas, don’t use which.

In my copyediting days, I would include a cartoon of a witch saying, “Use a comma!” to remind my writers that a which clause requires commas. I like to think people remember her when they are writing for their current publications. Maybe you will, too!

Have a question about grammar, punctuation, usage, or style? Email me at jennifer.land@kaplan.com and put “blog question” in your subject line. Then look for a response here!

Recently, I was listening to a recorded panel discussion entitled “To PhD or not to PhD” that was passed onto me by one of my colleagues at DePaul University so I could better answer a student’s query.  The panel was comprised of individuals from various institutions across the nation discussing their thoughts on the value of a PhD and what they are looking for in an applicant.  Each of these folks spent a good deal of their annual time reviewing and assessing hundreds of applications, all of which represented actual human beings who were vying for the ±3 spots that were open in their respective programs.  Clearly, this is a serious competition with seasoned players, high stakes, and big rewards.

At one point in the discussion, inevitably, the GRE came up.  An audience member wanted to know how the GRE Subject Tests were weighed and valued.  (The resounding answer, by the way, was that they were not valued because they were not required.  Of course, you should find out about the specific requirements for the programs to which you are applying.)  This inquiry then led a panelist to add one more thought about the notorious exam: “If your GRE scores are not where you want them to be with respect to what your given program considers adequate, then retake the test and bring those scores up.  Period.”  All of the other panelists subsequently expressed complete agreement.

We all wonder just exactly how an admissions committee is going to use/weigh each of the elements of our application package.  While we all likely have some elements we feel great about, there are others that we’d love to be a little stronger.  I’ve no idea what your individual case might be, but I’ll bet that there’s not much time left to develop the meaningful relationships with ex-professors requisite to yield stellar letters of recommendation.  I doubt that between now and application time you’ll get a heck of a lot more relevant work experience.  And, as much as many of us would like to go back in time and bring up our undergrad GPAs, time machines just aren’t an option.  The GRE, however, is one component you can actually do something about.  Fortunately, the GRE is a very important and influential consideration in the holistic assessment of your application package.  It can help balance out those not-so-lovely “other parts.”

Do whatever it takes to get the score you need to get on the GRE.  Period.

What does it mean to be fluent?  We most often hear about the notion of fluency on the subject of languages.  Those out there whom are lucky enough to have been raised speaking more than one language are likely fluent in both (i.e., you/they can effortlessly switch between the languages, and are just as comfortable speaking/writing/thinking in one as the other).  All of us are fluent in at least one language, though, so each of us has an intrinsic understanding of what true fluency is.  Nonetheless, here are a few definitions:

1.  able to speak or write smoothly, easily, or readily

2.  easy; graceful

3.  flowing, as a stream

4.  the property of a person or of a system that delivers information quickly and with expertise

As a Kaplan instructor, my overarching goal is to coach my students to become fluent in the GRE.  To be their most successful, my students must take in, process, and deliver information quickly and with expertise.  Content, strategies, recognized patterns, critical thinking. All must flow in through, and out of them—as a stream flows.

For example, it is not enough to know how to factor (i.e., reverse-FOIL) a quadratic equation.  Test takers must also memorize and be able to immediately recognize, in all their forms, the three Classic Quadratics that show up in GRE quant questions again and again:

• (x + y)² = (x + y)(x + y) = x² + 2xy + y²
• (x – y)² = (x – y)(x – y) = x² – 2xy + y²
• (x + y)(x – y) = x² – y²

Keep in mind that GRE test makers are confined by the standardized format of this test.  While the number of possible questions they can come up with is arguably infinite, test makers are notably bound in how they ask those questions and what the questions are actually testing.  When you, a training test taker, go beyond mere content and dive headlong into methodology, strategy, recurring patterns of how and what as well as the unmistakable rhetoric of this exam, you will place yourself squarely in control from start to finish.  And make no mistake: the more control you have, the more confident you will be going into Test Day, and the higher your score will be.

Our next post will cover how to begin taking control of your test preparation for the GRE so stay tuned.