Free GRE Prep Hour: Analytical Writing Essays

Hey so welcome to tonight’s GRE free prep our the theme of tonight’s hour we do these a couple times a month and we always have a different theme we try to alternate quant and verbal and tonight’s it’s gonna be a little bit different because we are going to talk about the writing you’re going to talk about the essays which we don’t talk about all that often so I thought it would be good to do a session on the essays we are going to be using the chat function a lot tonight that’s gonna be the main way for you guys to communicate so go ahead and find the chat and you’ll see in the two fields you can click on it and you can set it either to all panelists which means your chat go is just to me or to all panelists and attendees so I’d like you to select all panelists and attendees and chat us where are you signing in from tonight where are you based so find that chat Tulsa Chicago I’m in Brooklyn to Dan VM in bed-stuy Barbados nice yeah another New York London cool some of you must be in very different time zones – yay Lots in New York Club North Carolina Mexico Oh a couple people from Mexico nice awesome yeah and a lot of people from the south – pretty cool well welcome good to have you all here tonight let me tell you a little bit about what we are gonna do all of the problems and examples we’re gonna see today are from this book the 5-pound book if you’re gonna get one g re book this is the one I’d recommend it is actually more than five pounds it’s like 6.2 pounds oh good I’m happy here you were excited about the essays yeah and it has all the practice you will need so all the stuff we’re gonna see tonight is drawn from this so we’re gonna talk about we’re gonna talk about what to expect from the essays so just a basic overview of the structure of the test is anyone here new to GRE like you’re just now getting started thinking about it thinking about preparing oh yeah shaquiesha yay cool so this will be and Tammy nice yeah so we’re gonna start from the ground up we’re gonna look at just what you’re gonna see on the test and then we’re gonna dive into talking about what to expect from these essays what the expectations are for these essays and then we’ll spend some time looking at each of them one on one depending on how long oh the stakes we may have 5 10 minutes the end to do a more open Q&A; on another topics but an hour moves quickly so we’ll see how far we get all right so here is an outline of what you’ll see on the GRE at one important thing about the writing is that it always comes first so the first thing you do when you sit down is type you have a little text editor it’s very basic it’s kind of like Microsoft texts that that tool very simple like you can’t cut and paste there’s no spellcheck so you’re typing but in a pretty limited kind of word processor you’ll do those two essays and then you’ll move on to the multiple-choice sections that are probably where most of you will focus the bulk of your studies so you’ll do two quant sections two verbal sections and then a third section that’s either quant or a verbal that’s experimental and that one’s not scored the other important thing to note here is that your essay score is separate from the other scores so probably thinking about applications and targets you’ve thought a lot about this scaled score that 130 to 170 quant and purpose for you get those scores right away finish the test ome oh it’s a good question you’ll get those scores scaled scores immediately when you’re done the essay comes maybe seven to ten days later with your official report I mean that’s a great question it’s not clear where it comes it could come anywhere yeah this is like one example of sort of ordering but the order varies from test to test and they don’t tell you which is experimental so you just need to do your best on all of them yeah good to remember too if you get a section that feels really uncomfortable or weird there’s a good chance that’s the experimental so just don’t let it throw you off if you have facts variance all right so let’s dive into the essays though definitely feel free to throw out questions at any time always happy to get questions all right so the essays it’s the first hour and there are two tasks so you’ll spend 30 minutes on one the timer will go off you’ll be done you’ll move on and you’ll spend 30 minutes on the other one asks you to analyze an issue the other asks you to analyze an argument we’ll talk a lot about what those two tasks need ah these essays are scored by a combination of computer and person there is a real person who reads these essays so that’s why you get those scores later they need to have someone read keep in mind that this person who’s reading these essays has a lot to read and they’re reading really fast so that’s gonna shape some of some of how we approach writing these we have to write for someone who’s gonna be moving at the speed of light as they go through them all right the issue essay is very similar if you guys remember doing the SAT essay like the SAT writing which is what I did it’s at the very old SAT or when it was 2,400 scale the essay on that very similar they give you a broad open-ended prompt and you have to agree or disagree now it doesn’t matter which side you choose these are things where there’s never a right answer it just matters that you pick a side so what you don’t want to end up doing is sort of saying maybe it’s this maybe it’s that there’s a lot of shades of grey yes in life there’s always lots of shades of gray and nuance but for the purposes of the GRE issue I say you want to be decisive the argument essay is a little different it’s it’s probably if there’s one essay you’re gonna practice more the arguments probably the one where you’ll focus more of your time because the issue essays similar to stuff that you’ve likely done before the argument essay gives you a short piece of logical reasoning and you have to just basically explain what could be wrong with it lists possible flaws or assumptions or questions that the argument raises so here you’re not taking aside your not saying this is a good or bad argument it’s always kind of an okay argument and you just want to point out what could be wrong or what could be better but you don’t have to have a strong claim in the argument I see where’s in the issue si it’s all about having a strong both of these essays are your standard four to five paragraph essay that you’ve likely had to do before in high school or in college when you’ve had to do times writing more so if you’re coming from an American school if you are coming from a different educational system then this might take it might be a little different because writing gets taught a little differently in different places but it’s this standard structure so you’re gonna have an introduction with your thesis great question not necessarily it depends how fast you write you might have two body paragraphs or three I generally find people only do three body paragraphs if they’re very fast writers so if you just type really really quickly and sort of can put together sentences really quickly you might have time for three better if you’re if you’re a more methodical more meticulous writer to do two body paragraphs and just focus on making them very good so it’s okay to have four paragraphs and then your last paragraph will be a conclusion conclusion doesn’t have to be amazingly long it just has to be there has to be solid these essays are all about demonstrating competence they’re not about demonstrating originality or beauty or creativity it’s just showing I can put together a solid essay and thirty minutes is not a lot of time so again they’re not expecting the most amazing original thinking they’re just expecting that you you do it and you hit all the marks as you do so let’s talk about the issue si and they just said hitting all the marks and partly what I mean by that is you want to note what the prompt is asking you to do and then you want to make sure you do what the directions ask I’m going to show you here are the six possible sets of directions so every issue si will have some kind of claim and we’ll see an example of that in a little bit and then it will have one of these six sets of directions this is all theirs so I just want to give you a minute to read through these six directions don’t have to get every detail just read through them and think about what do you notice what are some similarities and what are maybe some differences once you’ve read through them when you have some ideas about similarities and differences you can go ahead and share them in the chopped you you cool yeah I’m starting to see some good responses yeah agree disagree so that’s a common theme where we’re in almost all of these being asked to take a stance yep and we’re being asked to discuss so we need to sort of yeah support with examples yep some have some have some more specific yeah some are more about general claims some have some more specific tasks yeah there we go some have a counter a counter position nice so it’s important to note which ones of these number one might or might not hold true so that’s asking for some kind of counter position number three asks us to talk about the most compelling examples that could be used to challenge so that’s asking for a counter position number four kind of as its asked us to address both of the views so it’s also asking for a counter position so you want to make sure that you check these directions see okay do I need this counter example okay yes if it’s one of these three then you should number two as well a little bit would or would not be advantageous is there any one of these that seems really different from the others there’s a lot of similarities here did anyone of these stand out as being odd or unusual yeah I think I think five and six both have have some unusual stuff in them number six because we get both a claim and your reason so we have two a lot of them were just getting a claim and we just agree or disagree with that but with number five we’re also gonna get our reason and we’re gonna have to address that too so there’s gonna be you know you could think maybe about AG paragraph on the claim a body paragraph on the reason that type of structure same thing with number six and number six we have to consider the possible consequences of implementing so that’s a little bit different to we’re thinking about do we agree with this policy but then also what’s going to happen if we implement it so four of these are very close and that we’re taking a stance and finding a counter example and then a couple are slightly different but you’ll be able to spot that right away from the directions and then you’ll know how to focus your preparation so don’t ignore these directions you can lose points if you don’t hit on all the things the directions ask you to do okay now let’s take a look at an example um before here I’ll show you so before you start reading this essay just don’t point out we have our directions here similar to what we just saw and then we now have our other component we have our claim so this is the set of directions where we’re going to be asked to agree or disagree and we’re gonna have to discuss a counter example I’ll give you a couple of minutes to read through this essay and then I’d like you I’d like your thoughts on what score you think this essay should get keeping in mind that these are being scored on a scale of 0 to 6 so take a couple of minutes read this through and then when you’re ready chat your score and maybe a word or two about why you think it deserves that score you alright guys are tough critics I keep sharing what you think you Olinda I’m curious about why you think this person didn’t answer the question you yeah I’d love to know more about why so we have sort of a question does it address address the prompt and we’re seeing sort of on the pros column there’s good vocab yeah Dan V what’s good about the structure you nice yeah we have sort of clear intro body paragraphs conclusion oh yeah this is a good point both Marco and Mary ollie up there is sophisticated and varied sentence structure and there are strong specific examples nice those are both very important things here yeah a lot of examples so this is actually an example some of you may feel very surprised by move about to say of an essay that would probably score is six and maybe that’s gonna feel heartening to you like oh this essay isn’t perfect it definitely has its flaws there’s at least one typo that I spotted reading it’s here again now we don’t admit of new evidence that’s not correct but that’s okay you can have a couple mistakes and still get a six they know that you’re writing these under time pressure yeah let’s think a little bit about this idea is this taking a strong stance it says strong beliefs prevent people from thinking clearly about issues and that’s a really really broad and one of the things that’s that this writer does that’s good is they take this huge broad idea and they focus it around some clear specific examples mostly mostly to do with sort of the history of science and religion and then a little bit with the civil war in the US as well and so big big broad thing but then they’re focusing it around specific examples and that’s really important now let’s take a look at their thesis strong beliefs do you prevent people from thinking clearly about issues when those beliefs are based on a motion group loyalty or tradition however strong beliefs need not cloud our thinking when those beliefs are a genuine product of a logical ongoing search for truth that is open to revision and new evidence so in this thesis the author is acknowledging kind of a counter position like yes there are cases there is a way in which this could happen however there’s a twist there’s a framework in which it’s not so they’re taking a stance on this issue but they’re also defining sort of the terms of the debate it’s not the only way to approach this there would certainly be other ways to argue compellingly here but this is a way that works to say I’m going to take this really really broad topic and I’m going to come up with very specific criteria for evaluating it and then tell you there’s a certain type of strong belief that works and therefore I don’t think this claim always holds true even if there are some cases where strong beliefs are a problem that’s our counter argument so I think maybe when we think is it taking a strong stance it’s that counter argument can make it a little murky but here there still is there still is that however and there’s the side that’s stronger so it’s fine to say like the other side has some points but there should still be a side that you come down clearly in favor of and you can do that by sort of restricting narrowing or defining the way I want shooting Pro I think they’re more disagree so they’re saying yes there are some cases where we could disagree there are some cases where you might agree but overall it’s more likely to disagree and here is when and where I would disagree that’s that that’s the sort of idea of the counter example to acknowledge that there are points for the other side but then come down more strongly on one side so it’s not that you have to say I agree that this claim is a hundred percent right every day all the time but you have to make a case for it being more right or less right does that make sense stampy that’s a great question I mean I you could if that feels workable for you like if you’re sort of brainstorming you’re like I have this great thesis upfront it’s fine though to have a thesis that to sort of have a one-way thesis up front to say like just that second part like strong beliefs don’t cloud our thinking in these cases and then go through to the other side I think always make it clear you know you acknowledge the counter-argument but then use the counter-argument to actually reimpose your thesis which is sort of what this person is doing here they’re saying like yeah in some cases it might be a problem but there’s a more important type of strong belief and that’s really where my thesis is focused to say sort of yeah there’s these other points but actually these other points help to reinforce my side more so acknowledging the counter-argument can actually strengthen your original thesis um that’s an interesting question I’m so sorry just a second Oh sorry my landlord came over and my dog is very excitable you I am so sorry I have a very nervous puppy and I had hoped to time things so that that would not happen my apologies I know you can you can reference the you can reference the claim as much as you want you can reference any any outside sources or authors that you want thank you guys it’s very nice I it helps stampy it helps to sort of narrow these prompts because they’re so big you know to sort of say like okay I’m going to choose to define this prompt in this way and that helps let’s try I want to try brainstorming for one and that might help us also like put some of these ideas into action and maybe make it clearer so here is a claim and it’s this is another example of directions that ask us for a counter-argument so I’m going to give you guys maybe three or four minutes to just brainstorm what points which side would you just would you choose here and what would examples would you brainstorm let’s try to pick a couple examples for the side you choose and then maybe one counterexample so do that and then we’ll meet back and discuss in three or four minutes you um is Linda can anyone else can everyone else see this is it is it just Linda is it enough bigger problem cool okay good you all right when you are ready I would like you to start doing what lay adjusted very elegantly I would like you to start just chatting what we would use to agree with this argument some examples for agreeing with this argument so agreeing would be government intervention Lea how to point government intervention bad for a free market else would support you ah government restrictions keep us from pursuing profitable ventures taxes might inhibit small business growth lack of regulations brings in investors governments don’t know about small business these are great these are all really great ideas so all things that support the idea that the government shouldn’t interfere does that even have some specific like examples like oh here’s a sort of case study you these are some great general points and ideas does anyone have a specific case for us ah so that’s that would sort of be our next step as we think about preparing for this task like lots of good ideas about what sort of law ah nice there we go yeah small farms forced out of business nice government regulation regulations in China yes Amy you should definitely in this essay include some concrete specific examples that’s a really important part of doing a strong one of these ah yes ah Walmart glasses nice that’s an excellent example startups and tariffs both good examples yeah so one of the things to think about as you prepare for these essays is if you if you were someone who has trouble thinking of specific examples you might start making lists as you practice with these essays like oh here’s a list of topics I know a lot about I you know here’s a list of topics I know a lot about that I might want to write about I have kind of a database of maybe 10 or 15 that are drawn from reading current events or things you studied in school or books you’ve read or as we discussed as we discuss in the chat earlier personal examples are fair game too and if you’re really stuck for a material you can invent personal examples it’s a little bit a last recourse I would say better to have other examples but in a pinch just say you know like my cousin had a small business in here’s what happened and invent that story but they want to see that you can make sort of a good broad point like we started out with here and then call on a specific fact example a case to support thinking back to that essay we just saw you know some broad points but then also talking about specific thinkers like Galileo or Descartes oh yeah corn and wheat subsidies there’s weirdly a lot of official guide questions that deal it’s it’s it works I wouldn’t say it’s my first choice but it’s it’s doable and it’s better than not having specific examples for sure we have a lot of agree what about some disagree I said no the government should be involved what are some points an example is that we could use to support that side Thanks what about some more specific examples we have a couple oh yeah nice for startups you certainly could Anna I think the strong the more extreme you make your claim I think the higher the burden of argument you’re replacing on yourself town that doesn’t allow big businesses and that’s that’s Sarah that’s an interesting example because I could see that being an actual town that you knew I could also see that me an invented town I had a student who was I had grown up in Moscow and she made a lot of her examples about like esoteric points of Russian history you know like medieval Russian history that may or may not have been totally true but highly unlikely you know that your reader would have that specialized knowledge yeah ah unfair contract competition Amazon yeah that’s a sore point in New York a point on which the people have many mixed feelings cool nice ah this is a really good brainstorm so this is sort of where you’d want to start in in planning one of these essays you might say okay I’m going to take three to five minutes and I’m just gonna list my examples on my counter and then I’m gonna organize them so I might then take these great ideas that I have and think about how to organize them into an essay I’m just gonna cover this up and say like okay I’m gonna have paragraph one might be businesses will get questionable funding let’s say I’m writing a disagree essay paragraph two would be businesses need support in starting and I could talk about the New York subsidies and paragraph three could be my counter-argument and I’d say something like taxes might inhibit growth and then for my counter-argument I’d say okay taxes might inhibit growth but actually government startup grants way that’s kind yes the more you can support all of your points with concrete examples the better off you will be I think if you maybe have like to exam two points that are supported by examples and one that’s more theoretical that’s okay but you wouldn’t want to have an essay that has no examples lay it to answer your question I generally say you have 30 minutes and I’d break it down you know maybe five minutes to plan 23 minutes to write and then two minutes for a quick proofread it depends a little bit how fast you write and how fast you brainstorm so if you are someone who thinks of things really quickly but then you’re a slower writer maybe you take two minutes to brainstorm and more time to write it’s also a really good idea to leave yourself a minute or two to go to go read through it again just if you can catch a couple errors that helps including quotes is a nice touch so if you have a couple quotes memorize that can be really nice it’s not necessary but it’s definitely a bonus they cut you off after 30 minutes and move you to the next task and I am shortly going to move us to the next task to look at the argument example yes hypotheticals are okay Sarah but I wouldn’t use only hypotheticals I would try to have a mix I look for I look for the mistakes I can spot quickly so like big spelling grammar typos errors I do like a quick scan counter is like I’m not sure I follow your question Oscar it any type can be history current events things you’ve studied generally can be novels books we’ve read philosophers articles you know a great thing to do for reading campaña giri is to read an article a day ah yes Sartain Singh I too read an article a day from from a publication that sort of GRE level and that will also be good because then you’ll have all these things you’ve read recently in your head that you can use for your essays so it’s a good exercise for building reading come skills but a great exercise for essay examples as well Marco a counterexample is saying it’s sort of like what might someone who’s arguing against you argue so you’d say like I think this side is right here’s why someone who disagreed might say this they kind of have a point but most say I’m really right does that make more sense there’s a hell yeah I doubt it it’s if you happen to get a reader who really knows that topic it might maybe impact you but I don’t think I think it’s rare you know if you say something glaringly wrong like the Declaration of Independence was signed in like 1502 that’s probably a problem but if it’s something more esoteric or a smaller fact than that’s yeah you want to have you want to have at least one sort of good solid example in there I would really try to stay clear of having none it doesn’t have to be every paragraph but you should have a couple let’s we can keep doing questions but let’s actually switch gears and look a little bit at the argument because that’s kind of different task and it’s an interesting one so here we go here the argument problems there’s a bunch so just take a quick scan you don’t have to read memorize these thoroughly this is just to get a rough sense and what I’m most interested in is how are these similar like what are they all kind of asking us to do here so take a moment scan through these and then share your answers in the chat you alright I’m seeing some good stuff so far but keep keep chatting in yeah asking for questions and evidence is also a big one yep yeah fact so either like questions to evaluate or facts to evaluate assumptions but they’re mostly asking us to evaluate here so what we were saying before assumes so rudely cut out on us yeah glad you’re back Co yeah we’ll talk about 7 most of these asked us to evaluate either find assumptions ask questions or point out evidence in some way yeah 7 is a little different rile that’s a good one to call out 7 is sort of saying you know it’s gonna say sort of say like here’s a weird thing that happened like it’ll often give us sort of some unexpected results and it’ll propose an explanation and you’re basically going to say actually there’s another way this might happen like the argument might say it’s Tuesday and it’s raining therefore tuesday causes rain and you could say well actually i think that it’s raining on a tuesday because there was a cold front that came through that’s a really silly example they’re not gonna be sort of that obviously bad but that’s essentially it’s gonna give you maybe like something that seems paradoxical are weird and ask you to propose another explanation that one’s a little bit different most of the others are more evaluative and number 7 is a little a little unusual so definitely if you see that one you’re gonna turn every frame okay so again we’re not looking for a strong stance here we’re looking to sort of list flaws to evaluate in some way so let’s take a look at an example here our prompt asks us to write a response in which we examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions and then be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwanted what do they mean by assumption here what do you guys think they’re talking about what do you think when you see this word assumption in argument yeah nice yeah you guys are you guys have been studying uh an argument we’ve seen from a lot of you arguments have a couple components they have premises or sort of facts given is true they use these premises to we may reach a conclusion sort of a big claim and then in between we have our assumptions and these are not stated or or may be stated but not but not necessarily true but have to be true for the argument to hold so the assumptions are sort of the uncertain parts of our argument but we need them the conclusion depends on them so you say like oh this argument is assuming X and if X isn’t true then the argument falls apart so let’s try it uh I’m gonna give you guys three minutes I just want you to brainstorm all the assumptions that you see here write them down on your paper and we’ll discuss you all right uh oh that’s a good point to keep chatting them in nice yeah I think we’re getting a pretty good list so that’s one thing to keep in mind with these arguments there’s always gonna be a ton of things that are bad with these arguments these are never gonna be super strong arguments so you should ideally have a bunch of things to consider so we’ve I think we’ve done a good job of listing a lot of assumptions um there’s probably more that you guys have thought of but I have run out of space on my screen but now I’m curious about the second part of this problem so one part of this prompt asks us to list exceptions but the other half asks us to consider what are the implications that these things are not true so let’s just think about that for a couple of these you get the hang of this so this one says people can be more productive in four days rather than five what if that’s not true what happens how does that impact this argument if it’s not true that people can be more productive in four days yeah yeah so now it’s there’s a negative impact made outweighed the positive yeah yeah if people might procrastinate loose focus yep and so maybe that you know what they’re saving by shutting down the office is actually going to be cut out what if it’s not true that people want Friday off what happens then you yeah so this is gonna impact them or outside you know we’ve kind of two parts are for a conclusion like boost morale and improve profits and if the productivity impacts profits and morale this one really impacts morale yeah they may have other things going on there may be these other other negative implications that they haven’t considered Thanks so for this this is this is the sort of the two big points you want to hit here and you guys are pointing out lots of really good ideas and this is a place to sort of run run loose run wild with this kind of what if this what if that these sort of hypotheticals so if the issue essay is all about anchoring in concrete examples here we can really let our hypothetical imagination have freer rein and that will help ah so you in this one you’re gonna say like okay here is like you know five different assumptions I’m going to explain what these assumptions are I’m gonna explain how they’re working and then I’m gonna tell you what the impact of these is don’t forget that impact part so great to say people they’re assuming that people can be more productive in four days and then go on and say but if that’s not true here’s what’s gonna happen one thing that can help with these argument questions is to be aware of sort of common flaws or patterns that show up of these yeah I’m gonna i actually am going to point you guys to a resource where you can see a lot of examples of different types of essays nope this one can be totally hypothetical because you’re really just evaluating the argument that they give you on screen um I have a couple of things I want to say about style and the actual writing in these essays we saw a little bit of that when we looked at that issue essay but it’s worth reiterating these are true for both argument and issue have your thesis your summary of key points very clearly in your introduction like I agree with us and here’s why or there are seven flaws I’m going to talk about in this hour like get that up front remember that your readers read really fast so you want that first paragraph to be very strong and very clear and to give them a clear roadmap of what’s following good style usually involves the varied sentence structures to think about having long complex sentences some short simple sentences looking for a variety and how you’re putting things together on the sentence level you’ll be studying vocabulary for the GRE maybe you have been maybe will be those are great words throw them into your essay however this is for all Linda yeah for both essays only use the word if you’re certain you’re using it correctly there’s nothing nothing of worse than like reaching forward you don’t quite know how to use in context and it not working so for that reason when you study vocab make sure you’re studying how words are used you’re looking at example sentences you’re learning those words in context so you can use them on your essays length is important longer essays tend to score better so write as much as you can obviously don’t sacrifice quality just to put a ton of stuff on the page but make that brainstorming pretty fast you know three to five minutes so that you have plenty of time to write you need to have a conclusion as we saw in that issue I say though that conclusion was really short right it was like maybe a couple sentences so your concluding paragraph doesn’t have to be big it can be just a couple sentences reiterating your main point Linda I have an idea I have a couple ideas for you talk about in a sec but don’t skip the conclusion like make sure that you can finish in those 30 minutes that’s really important that you have a complete essay what to do next if you want to work at this task the I booked everyone studying for the GRU should have made by ETS yes Lindsay there’s a timer at the top of the screen that counts down just like you have a timer for the the multiple-choice sections yep start by reading that there are example essays in that that I think you’ll find helpful ets the people who make the GRE if you go to their website they also have example essays for every score six five four three two one zero on their site so you can see sort of the full range of what a very good essay looks like what a solid essay looks like what a not good essay looks like I would practice writing Oh timed issue and it’s a new argument essay so pick a prompt there’s a bunch on the ETS website there’s a bunch of our books set a clock for 30 minutes countdown I another thing to do if this brainstorming part is hard for you and this is also something to do if you you need to save more time to write if you’re writing it takes a little longer get a big group of prompts like five prompts ten prompts and just give yourself three minutes and do what we did tonight like brainstorm your examples decide on your outline brainstorm examples decide on your outline if you do that a bunch it starts to get fast you start to build that pool of common examples that you’re likely to draw from and that way you can make that step super quick finally at some point you should do a full practice test that includes the essays so not every practice test you do needs to have the essays in it it’s exhausting so it can be nice to skip them but you should have at least one experience of the full test with the essays the other thing that I forgot to put on here but that I mentioned earlier and then they think is good is outside reading so read an article a day from a good source and particularly try to pick topics you’re not that familiar with and that’s really great because that’s going to help you build reading comps kills so it’s gonna help you elsewhere in verbal and it’s going to give you a really nice story of examples to draw from in your essays um breath what topics do you not like I can recommend a couple by topic philosophy ah I would look at the New York Review of Books or an LA Review of Books those are probably good ones if sort of like tough intricate humanity stuff government you might look at The Economist or the Atlantic good ones yeah you do get scrap paper yep you get scrap paper for the whole test so you can make notes for your essay when you’re doing quantum you’re doing verbal it’s unlined they give you unlined paper and pencils all right that is all that I have for you guys one other thing if you want more guidance have more questions you can come to a free trial class either online or in person if you live in a place where we offer in-person classes and those run all the time so if you want more sort of in-depth advice go for that Linda I would practice brainstorming I got my coat go ahead and ask a question Linda I would practice the brainstorming step and get that really fast and then I I would I would just do up a few practice essays because I think you’ll find they get faster and also you’ll find that you write about the same examples over and over again so you start to develop like oh okay I’m gonna use my like American Revolution example and I practiced what I’m gonna say for that so sort of having some like formulaic explanations of examples that you put into assays will help it go faster so you can do it longer Marco it depends a lot on how close you are to where you want to be so if you haven’t I would take a practice test and see where you’re at we offer a free practice test on our website so take it see if you’re very close to your goal score then two weeks could be perfect amount of time it varies a lot from person to person depends where you are where you need to be what things you need to improve on reading and vocab or sometimes a little slower take a little longer to improve quant can be a little faster but it depends on the person take a practice test in C and you can always take the official test again – good thing to remember yay you know sometimes it’s good to just do it plunge off the deep end let’s see how it goes all right happy holidays to everyone it is 9 o’clock I need to sign out I check out a class if you want I want more advice best of luck and enjoy preparing I hope it goes well you