The GED is Easy: An Interview (Part 2)

Taking the Test

What was it like when you actually took the test?

Before going in to take the test I knew I was going to pass math, so I did slack a little bit on it.  I knew the reading.  I felt good with reading.  I felt good with everything besides the writing, the essay.  On the science and the history I had a little wondering, like those might be my rough ones right there.  It turned out very differently when I actually took the test.

When I went in for the test they gave us a quick rundown on the booklets and passed them out.  I started with the essay first, the writing essay.  That was the thing I was worried about the most.  Everybody got a different topic.  They happened to give me the topic about making a life change: “What life change could you make that would affect you in the long run and would affect you down the line in your life?”  If you didn’t have something to write about you could just make something up, but I picked cigarettes, and bam!  I just wrote a whole page essay. They wanted at least a page.  I gave them a good solid, first paragraph, where I brought together all the ideas about why it would be good to quit cigarettes.  Then I just gave three good detail paragraphs about how quitting cigarettes would affect my life: I would breathe better, smell better, and have more money in my pocket.  Three real quick things, bam!  I wrote about all those and then summed it up at the end.  It was a little bit more than a page long and I passed the thing with a 4 out of 5.  I barely even tried and thought, “Damn, that was easy.”  That surprised me because that was what I was worried about.

Once I did that I had to do the reading section.  The reading was a breeze.  Everything that you read on the test answers the questions after the passage.  Every single answer is in there.  I got almost a 90% on the reading, because a couple of times I went real quick and didn’t really answer.  If you fail the reading then you probably can’t read that great.  [Laughs]  If you can read, then you should be able to do the reading.  There’s no doubt in my mind.

After I finished the reading test, I did the English grammar section and then was done for the first day.  The second day of the test was supposed to happen a week later, but something happened so the second test was delayed an extra week.   That time it was math, history, and science.  I did really well in science and history.  History was kind of a close call.  I had to guess on some answers.  Time was running out and it was either get it wrong, or read it as fast as I can and try to get it as close as I could.  

On the history and science tests I found that you don’t need to know every single thing about it.  In the test they help you.  They give you a little passage and then you look at it and the answers are there, pretty much.  The science was a little tough.  I did better with the science, actually, than with the history.  But as with the history, they gave you the information.  For example, they had a map of different turfs and then they have five questions about the different turfs.  It was like a graph almost.  It wasn’t just the kinds of turfs, they had time periods too.  It was weird.  They had questions about whether the turf was the same from these certain years.  I had never seen something like it before, but if you have any sense and you look at that graph, the answers are there.  You just have to do the littlest things to find it.  As for GED, I don’t know anybody that couldn’t pass.  I couldn’t imagine not being able to pass the GED.  A lot of the answers are right there for you.  You just have to use your mind to grasp the answers.  

For the science test they had some questions about evolution, food-chains and food-webs.  The questions were like, “If you took this away, how would that affect this other animal?”  There were other questions about molecules and atoms.  I got a few of them right because I remembered some stuff from school.  They threw in a couple of different studies.  They didn’t just have one kind of science for the whole thing.  

They don’t make it totally like you have to figure it out yourself.  There’s information there that you can find the answer through.  For some of the questions you kind of have to know before you take the test, but to pass it you don’t need to know it.  You just need to know common sense.  You literally need common sense and you can pass the GED.  I’m positive. If you have common sense, you can pass because it’s the way they set it up.  There are things you aren’t going to know, but you’ve got to just work at it and try your best at those.  For the rest of it just put your brain to work and use the common sense.  They give you little hints, the answers are there.  I didn’t even think it was going to be like that.

Are you saying that the GED questions are less about memorized information, and more about interpreting problems?

One example is the vocabulary part with the reading section of the test.  It wasn’t necessary to know how to spell, necessarily.  They give you words, and some of these words, I have no idea what they are. You have to think to yourself, “How am I going to know what this word means?  Well let’s see.  Let me use some of my common sense.”  So you read this sentence and then you can kind of figure it out.  Just by reading the sentence with that word in it, you can tell what it’s about.  That’s how I figured out how to get a lot of them right.  I did really well on that, just by looking into the rest of the words around this word they used.  This worked even when the word was weird sometimes.  

I could probably have my little sister go into that GED right now, and I swear she could pass it.  My sister is 11-years-old, and I swear she could pass it.  I’m pretty positive.  The only problem she would have would be with the math.  With the information they give you on the GED any regular person should have no problem at least getting low passing grades, even in the 60-65% area the whole time.  There’s no way you should be failing any of this, unless you were literally not looking at it and ignoring what is in front of you.

Did you take the GED as well?  Tell us all about it!

The GED is Easy: An Interview (Part 1)

Path to the GED

How did you decide to get your GED?

The only reason I didn’t get my actual high school diploma was because some problems came up in my life that caused me to miss some school.  When I tried to back they said I was behind and wanted to put me in the 10^th grade.  At the time, I was turning 17 and didn’t really want to go back with a bunch of young kids to do the next few years over again.  I knew I could pass the GED because… it just felt like it couldn’t be that hard.  I’d only made it to 9^th grade, but I figured getting my GED at the time would be better than going back to get my high school diploma.  If I had done that, I’d be in 12^th grade right now at 20-years-old.  In a way, it might be nice to go back and get your high school certificate so you can have the extra advantage.  But to get your GED, it’s good to have something, and I didn’t want to do three more years of school.  It didn’t seem practical.

How did you prepare to take the GED?

At first I went to this community center and they gave me pretests of each part of the GED: the writing, the reading, all the different topics that they have.  I took practice tests on all of them and every time I got them back, they kept being 90 or higher.  They were easy.  By the time I finished all the tests and the writing essay the woman there, she told me, “You’re ready. “  Some kids when they take the practice tests find that they need to work more before taking the GED.  She just told me I was ready.  There was a little concern with the writing test.  That was my low thing.  But that was because I just slacked off at that point.  I knew I could have done better, but I was trying to get out of there.  I knew I was going to write a better essay for the actual GED.  I felt very comfortable on everything else.  

I saw her for 2 or 3 three days and then I decided to go get my GED.  I took the tests on two days and then the third day I got the scores back.  She scored most of the tests right away.  But for the essay, she scored me after on that.  I went and did the practice tests; and once I did that, I felt comfortable.  I thought to myself, “Man, it’s time to get my GED.”  It felt like it was going pretty good.  

Did you take the GED as well?  Tell us all about it!

Don't let the research scare you.

Have you ever listened to a teacher or adult talk to a student who is thinking about quitting school and getting a GED?  If so, you probably heard the teacher try to convince the student that staying in school and graduating would be the smarter choice.  The teacher might offer a number of reasons for this, but it usually includes a claim that the diploma will get you a higher paying job than a GED.  Most teachers don’t really know whether this opinion is true or not.  They believe it because they finished high school and it seemed to work for them.  They also believe it because everyone else does.  Graduation is just something you have to do; nobody questions it.  

This popular belief is sometimes supported by research that you might read about in the news, or hear about from your guidance counselor.  It’s good to consider research when you are making a decision, but there are several reasons why you should think carefully before letting these studies discourage you.

The first thing you might consider is that experts who conduct this kind of research are typically very committed to the traditional education process.  Normally they are people who’ve done well in school and school has worked out well for them.  Most of the time they work very hard to be objective when doing their analyses, but they are still human and will be somewhat biased in favor of school when interpreting their findings. 

Such bias, however, is a relatively minor problem.  A more important concern is that most studies showing bad outcomes for people with GEDs are based on correlations.  A correlation means that two things happen together in a pattern.  In the case of GEDs there may be a pattern that people with a GED make less money than people with high school diplomas.  However, when you look at the details in individual people’s lives you realize that there is a lot going on that affects what kind of job a person has beyond what type of diploma they received.  It’s a classic case where “correlation does not imply causation.”  (Read more about this idea here and here.)  Because people believe that a diploma is better than a GED, they generally only choose to pursue a GED if they have struggles that make finishing high school very difficult.  Those same struggles have a tendency to affect work life as well as school. 

Another aspect of  research on GEDs is that they usually drop anyone from the analysis who goes to college.  If you get a GED and then go to college, the problems discovered by these kinds of studies won’t apply to you.  

One final concern to be aware of with research on GED outcomes is the age of the data used.  In order to do this kind of study effectively the researchers need information that tracks a large number of people over the course of at least several years.  Collecting data like this is expensive and takes a long time.  Consequently, it is not done very often and any analysis may be done using information that is too old to say very much about what the experiences and expectations of current high school students will be.

The bottom line is, if you are considering leaving high school early and getting a GED, you may need to resist the intimidation of a culture that insists graduation is necessary.  Instead, you should take a rational look at your own goals and circumstances to make a correct choice for your life.

The G.E.D. worked for me!

After a quick look around the web we've found a few stories of people who got their G.E.D. and made it work for them.  Check out the links below:

This is the story of a woman who quit high school and now runs a successful business.

This man got his G.E.D. and now has a high paying job that he's proud of.


This is the story of a grandmother who learned to read to her grandchildren while preparing for her G.E.D.

This is the story of a city worker who got his G.E.D. in an accelerated program.

This woman got her G.E.D. to meet a life-long goal and make her family proud.

Do you have a story about how a G.E.D. worked for somebody?  Let us know about it.

"How I got my G.E.D."

I got my G.E.D. when I was 21-years-old in a county jail.  They offered you the opportunity to take the test there if you had not already got your G.E.D. or high school diploma and had classes to help you study and prepare for the test.  These classes were an hour and a half long and were 5 times a week, Mon-Fri.  I went to about 80% of the classes, which lasted for about two months and were immediately followed by the test.  The classes normally had 8-12 students and one teacher.

The main reason I decided to get my G.E.D. is because I would need to have it to get into college.  I did not have to study hard to pass it.  The main things were touching up on my basic math skills and algebra and learning the structure of a “five-paragraph essay”.  It really did not take much effort to relearn these things and I feel that anyone who has completed a year or two of high school would be able to pass the test.  The information just needs to be fresh in your head.  I had not been to school in 4 years and did not need to study much at all.  The reason for my going to so many classes was to get out of the cell, and I enjoyed helping other people study and getting into ridiculous debates with the teacher.

To study for the test I would go through a set of questions that are typically found on the test.  After completing this “mock test” I would be able to see which kinds of questions I have problems with.  For example: after taking the “practice” or “mock” test I might realize I have problems with using “Pythagoras’s equation” to find the length of a triangle or how to find the percent of a number.  I would then focus on those kinds of problems.   In my case, I would ask the teacher to explain it, but you don’t need to have a teacher or be in a class to learn this stuff.  You could look the problem u online and find a good website that explains how to do it.  You could find a book on the subject, or ask a friend.  After going over the stuff you had difficulty with until you understand how it works, take another practice test to see how you do.  

The G.E.D. is broken down into 5 different sections, so you only need to focus on one at a time.  The five sections are: math, science, social studies, reading and writing.  For me, I only had to focus on two of those.  If you are comfortable with a section the first time you take it, you can put it out of your mind.  The main thing is making sure it’s all fresh in your mind when you go to take the test.  Review anything you had difficulty with the night before.  

When I took the test it was over the course of two mornings.  When you take the test you take each of the five sections one at a time.  For each section you are given a certain amount of time to complete it.  I don’t remember exactly how much time was given, but I had enough time to carefully go through each problem and go back and review all my answers when I was done and still have time to waste after.  If you can comfortably get through the practice tests you should not have to worry about time being an issue.  You have to wait for the time for that section to run out before you can go on to the next section.  If you get caught up on a problem, skip it and go back to it once you have finished everything else in that section.  Don’t worry about getting a few wrong; that’s fine and you will still pass.  When you get to the writing section and have to write an essay, don’t worry about being creative or very informative.  Just answer whatever questions the essay asks for and show them you understand how to write a “5-paragraph essay”.  If you don’t have much (or anything) to write on the subject, or have no interest in the subject, just write the way someone else would who does care.  Make things up.  Keep it short and to the point.  The people grading these essays have to read so many of them and it doesn’t matter what you write as long as it makes sense, answers the question, and shows you know how to write an essay.  

 Did you get your G.E.D.?  Please tell us your story!

Helping people access the GED

With an education system that is becoming increasingly centralized at the federal level, the GED remains one of the best opportunities for students who need options that are not provided by mainstream schooling.  In the news various communities are increasing the supports available for individuals seeking the GED and in some innovative ways.  Recently in Virginia a $383k dollar grant was awarded to Thomas Jefferson Adult and Career Education (TJACE), for the purpose of expanding their GED preparation programs, among others.  In order to increase the community’s access to GED preparation TJACE has developed a hybrid online model for delivering the GED courses.  (Davis 2012)

In response to early challenges discovered in strictly on-line types of classes, many institutions began using hybrid versions that would implement both on-line features and face to face classes.  This model of course delivery was developed at least as early as 2001 and is said to have been initiated at the request of non-traditional students in the college setting.  Although there has been more research in this area since, a study of one of these early attempts with a hybrid model found that students learned faster and better than when using an online only version.  (Martyn 2003)  This method should be particularly successful with the kind of non-traditional students who are seeking a GED because it can provide the flexibility, as well as the personal contact, that this type of student can use.  

In Winston-Salem, N.C. collaboration between Forsyth Tech Community College and the WR Anderson Community Recreation Center has improved access to GED courses by making them available off-campus in the Anderson Center’s neighborhood.  This will add to Forsyth Tech’s four other satellite GED locations. (Garms 2012)  Forsyth Tech’s GED programs specialize in helping students with Irlen Syndrome, a form of light sensitivity.  Students who struggle with this condition can read more easily through the use of colored lenses and films while reading.  In 2010 about 44% of Forsyth Tech’s GED students were able to benefit from using this method. (Forsyth Technical Community College 2010)

On the other side of the country, the Oregon Employer Counsel has recently donated $1550 to the Easter Oregon University‘s testing center to help individuals with financial need access the new computer-delivered GED exams.  The EOU program is one of the first to implement the new computer-based GED, which they did during the summer.  The new scholarship fund may be particularly timely as the new test is more expensive than the paper version.  In some areas the cost has doubled.  The Counsel acknowledges that it has become more difficult to secure employment without a high school equivalent credential, and wants to help at least a few individuals succeed.  (Eastern Oregon University 2012) (Eastern Oregon University 2012)

Works Cited

Davis, Megan A. "Local GED organization expading its reach." The Daily Progress. Charlottesville, VA: World Media Enterprises Inc, September 23, 2012.

Eastern Oregon University. "EOU launches new computer-based GED testing services." Eastern Oregon University - Press. La Grande, OR, June 14, 2012.

—. "Oregon Employer Council supports students completing GED exams at EOU’s testing center." Eastern Oregon University - Press. La Grande, OR, Oct 9, 2012.

Forsyth Technical Community College. "Forsyth Tech celebrates graduation of GED and AHS students." Discover Forsyth Tech. Winston-Salem, North Carolina, 2010.

Garms, Layla. "Rec center's latest offering: GED classes." The Chronicle. Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Oct 18, 2012.

Martyn, Margie. "The hybrid online model: Good practice." Educause Quarterly. no. 1. January 1, 2003. 18-23.