Hi,
I took my GRE almost 2 weeks ago, and got all my results back a few days ago.
I did self study for 5 weeks before I took the exam.
My study strategy was using the manhattan prep (i just bought online books and used my kindle on phone/ipad/mac for portability). For verbal, I used the manhattan prep advanced/essential vocabs & strategies for verbal Qs, and for quant, I selected manhattan prep books depending on my weakness, but with hindsight would've bought them all.
I took around 7 mock tests (2 free from the ets website and bought 5 on manhattan prep). I found that these tests really reflected the real test.
Throughout the 7 mock tests, I gradually improved from late 150s to early 160s, but I did find it frustrating how little my scores improved over my 5 weeks of study. Although it is a short time to improve drastically, I studied quite diligently before and after work everyday approx. 3 hrs/day.
However, learning the verbal words & strategies, I became very confident in verbal. I found that to improve in quantitative, I would need a couple more weeks of study in my area of weakness.
In my test, I got 167 (98%) verbal & 160 (76%) quant & 4.5 (82%) writing.
I didn't train separately for writing, and only practiced during the practice tests. I'm hoping that my high verbal scores & a good SOP will cover for it. I'm disappointed with my quantitative, but I think that 5 weeks is just too little time to up my scores and I performed a little worse on the day . I got lucky with verbal and will probably stick with these scores as I cannot bear to do any more studying!
I understand your frustration. I'm not sure what your strategy has been, but I'd say for verbal, just learn those vocabs (I looked at the vocabs almost every night 10 minutes before sleep) & the strategies in the manhattan prep (these really helped!). For quant, work on those areas you're most weak in. Wish you all the best, good luck!
