NYCU Computer Science: GRE 326 on My First Try, Prepared in Junior Year, Thanks to Mason GRE [Test Score] GRE 326 First Attempt

[Background] Computer Science, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (NYCU)

[English level] GSAT English 14, TOEIC 855

[Prep time] 2021.01–2021.02 (Mason GRE, summer 2019 weekday morning class)

Why the GRE? Why study abroad?

In the summer after my freshman year I spent a month in Silicon Valley, visiting the headquarters of lots of tech giants and top California universities. At the time I figured that since I was studying computer science anyway, I might as well test my limits. My older brother also did his master's abroad and went on to a PhD, so someone in the family had already paved the way for me. I don't really want to live abroad long-term, but I'd like to give the US a shot while I'm young, try working abroad and build up a network for starting a business someday. Afterwards I might come back to Taiwan or start a company in the US, who knows. I took Mason GRE the summer after freshman year, because I had nothing to do and wasn't skilled enough yet for an internship, so I signed up for Mason. It turned out everyone in my class was a junior or senior, and I didn't have much motivation in the study group either, so I kept putting the test off until this winter break, when I finally had time to prepare and went all in to get it done. Still, I recommend taking the test within a month of finishing the course. My prep took about 25 days, but it had been a year and a half since the class. I'm embarrassed to say I basically had to recall what the teachers said in class from scratch, and even asked friends who had just finished the course, because I'd forgotten what some of my notes meant. So a one-month sprint right after the course is more than enough.

Unexpected benefits of studying for the GRE

I'm in an interdisciplinary fintech program, and I've long read foreign business and stock market news, like Bloomberg. After studying for the GRE I noticed that I suddenly understood some of the odd words. Mason's community is strong: in the study group I met lots of cool, impressive older students (since I took the course as a freshman, everyone was usually older than me). Most of them have since gone abroad to study, and they've given me a lot of help with applications. Also, English writing has always been my biggest weak spot. I love speaking English with foreign friends and picked up a lot of very colloquial words, so when I started writing essays I'd use casual words that don't belong in an essay. Practicing GRE essays improved my writing in both speed and grammar. To brush up on grammar, I even dug out some of my high school notes first.

Why Mason GRE?

When I searched online for how to prepare for the GRE, MasonGRE was the first result, so I signed up. I trust Google's recommendation algorithm haha

How I prepared for each section

Vocabulary (text completion and sentence equivalence)

Since I only had 25 days, I spent roughly the first two days going through a whole text-completion workbook and doing the exercises at the back. Then I moved on to the text-completion practice books, one set a day, and when reviewing I'd go back to the workbook from class. If I still got a question wrong at that point, I folded down the top-right corner of the page: getting it wrong after studying it once meant it was a weak spot. I reviewed all the folded pages again 1–2 weeks before the test and memorized them by rote if I had to. I only studied Mason's vocabulary material, and about 2 questions on the actual test matched it, so if you're short on time, just focus on Mason's material and deal with everything else if you have time left. I guess I only memorized the 1000-word list. A week before the test I put the words from that list I hadn't mastered into Quizlet, because by then I didn't know what else to study. My study plan said the teacher recommended just going over the 1000-word list, so to calm my nerves I kept drilling that Quizlet set the day before the test until it was burned into my brain. I basically didn't study the 2000-word list; I memorized it on a long flight to the US a year and a half earlier and have probably forgotten all of it.

Reading

Reading was the hardest part for me, and I'd almost completely forgotten what Kory taught in class. But I took a friend's advice and raced through the course handouts. Toward the end I got a feel for Kory's tone analysis: it's like analyzing the structure of a passage from an all-knowing perspective, and gradually you can guess what the author wants to say. After that I didn't know what else to practice, so I started on KMF's real questions. I did 3 sets and got 9 out of 10 right each time. I think KMF is a bit too easy, so I'd still recommend mastering and finishing Kory's handouts before doing any extra prep. Although I'd finished the long passages before the test, on the real test I guessed on all of them haha, because I ran out of time. I was also in bad shape that day: I probably got the worst, loudest, most cursed GRE test center in the universe, so all I wanted was to do my best on what I could control. So practice reading following Kory's steps, and focus on the right things.

Writing (AW)

During my 25 days of prep I wrote at least one AW essay a day. I first organized all of the teacher's frequently tested prompts in a Google Doc, so every day I knew which prompt to do and exactly how many issue and argument prompts I had left. At first I timed myself at 40min, and for about 6 essays I always went a bit over. Later I figured out the trick to argument essays and could basically write 450+ words in 30mins. Issue essays were still a bit hard for me, but I prepared some examples, like Taiwan's referendum on the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant, computer science, and Elon Musk (I'm a big Musk fan, so basically whenever a prompt lets me bring in Musk I'll write about him, and I can fill 2 paragraphs, almost 250 words haha). Later, when I did the PP tests I still couldn't finish my AW essays, which made me a bit nervous, but two days before the test I scheduled another mini mock and wrote 2 more essays, both 400+ words within 30mins. On test day my argument prompt was the last one on the frequent-prompts list. I knew it was in the handout but had never written it, and with adrenaline kicking in I think I wrote over 450 words in 23mins. So there really is a template you can practice for argument essays. The issue prompt was one I'd never seen, but as I said above I wrote about Musk, the topic I know best, and got 400+ words in about 25mins. So I recommend practicing AW a lot, especially argument essays: the return on effort is high.

Math

I finished all three of KH's handouts, usually timing myself at 20mins, and wrote down how many I got wrong on each set and whether I went over time. On test day I got 3Q2V and was thrilled, since quant is my strength. The second Q section was super hard and I ended up guessing on 3 questions. I thought I was done for, but I told myself it was the experimental section, and sure enough my final 170 showed me how important it is to reset your mindset in the moment and keep going with the remaining questions. The GRE isn't just a battle of English skills; it's also a moment to show how strong your mental game is.

Study schedule

I studied for about 25 days in total, doing nothing but GRE all day, which I'd estimate at 10+ hrs a day, though now and then I'd go to the gym, eat or work out with friends from my study group. By the way, only one of my study group friends was taking the GRE, and not that soon; the other wasn't preparing for the GRE. But I'm really grateful to them, because no matter what you're studying, when you're cramming hard, having someone next to you cramming too shows you everyone is working hard, so you push yourself harder. I also invest in US stocks, so the 10:30 p.m. market open every night became a little treat for me back then. Stocks kept going up, which put me in a great mood since my study-abroad fund was rising with them, and that helped my GRE prep a lot. But do think twice, because if it's a bear market, that'd be QQ.

What happened on test day

This is the most important part of this whole post: whatever you do, stay away from the American life learning test center near Beimen. It's the worst ever, no joke. Here's how the story goes. On test day I got to the test center at 9:00 as Mason advised, only to find a crowd of people downstairs who couldn't get up. They rang the doorbell, and the grandma proctor said she'd already come down to open the door twice, that whoever was on the fourth floor kept closing it for some crazy reason, and that we should figure it out ourselves. Hello? I'm about to take the GRE, how am I supposed to have time to figure out how to get someone to open the door? After a helpful fellow test-taker solved that crisis, we went up to the 8th floor and heard the grandma cursing nonstop, saying stuff like ETS should stop screwing people over, the whole system was down and we couldn't take the test. I was stunned. The 20 of us waited from 9:30 until after 11:00, and the grandma kept cursing the whole time and saying she quit. Once we got into the test room I thought, great, I can definitely finish now. Then the computer of the person next to me crashed outright, and some people's computers even crashed halfway through. I don't know where they ended up. Luckily my computer worked and I finished the GRE. My test was on 2/7, right before Lunar New Year, and I really didn't want it dragging on past the holiday, but the others were in a terrible spot and I have no idea what they did. The craziest part: from the moment I started my AW essays, the grandma was on the phone with her boss inside the test room, cursing nonstop and saying she quit. Halfway through my AW I kept hearing things like Pigsy and so on. I was going crazy. I must have used every focusing trick I know to stare at the screen and finish the GRE, and I still can't believe what I went through that day. So when you do PP tests, be sure to try answering in the worst possible environment, because you never know if you'll end up at the worst test center in the universe on test day.

Wrap-up and thanks

First, thanks to my family for supporting me in pursuing my dream, thanks to my brother for paving the way, and thanks to the GRE 327 legend who kept coming to my dorm room for late-night snacks: since it had been so long since my Mason course, I asked you about everything I'd forgotten, and your advice was always useful. After the test I found that everyone's takeaways are pretty much the same, so if you're preparing now, just trust Mason GRE. Finally, thanks to all the teachers and staff at MasonGRE.