Hitojung

I cannot give any opinion of Prepscholar because I have never used it. When I gave the test, I bought Magoosh (6-month plan). I went through the course as a supplement in addition to official materials. Anyway, I ended up appearing for GRE twice. To be honest, I feel Magoosh overprepares exam takers with super difficult questions or those with extreme tricks when in fact the hardest questions in the real test would not be that hard. So in my opinion, official materials are the best thing you need. If you wish, you can supplement with this online course but never use it as your main prep source. Good luck!

Well, I had to prepare my GRE while working too. What would help is to focus on the part which needs more attention. If you need to ace Quant, more time on Quant relative to Verbal, and vice versa. Above all consistency with practice is there. I forced myself to practice quant before sleeping every night! And as you said you are been away from standard test for a long time, I think you need to do practice test often (i mean the test sections of the book).. I used 5lb. Manhattan to review my Quant + Barron 6 practice tests. What is good about Manhattan is they give you a code for online material. With 5lb. you get online question bank. Also Manhattan has separate volumes for each Quant chapter (like Algebra, bla bla). Just buy one of the chapters and you will get 6 online practice tests (I didn't have enough time for this so I didn't buy). I didn't focus on Verbal, so I am not sure what to suggest. But the 5lb. provides lots of sample essays and verbal practice too. Edit-- P.S. Also read the book reviews first so to find the ones that fit your needs

I assume you are talking about the 5lb. Book of Manhattan. I used this book to push my score too. However, I feel that this book alone would not be sufficient because they divide Quant into many chapters, each of which contains alot of questions ranging from easy to hard ones. But in the real test, you would be facing with 20 random questions of unknown difficulty (be it easy or hard) from different topics. So what I did was: in addition to the 5lb. Manhattan, I practiced from the 'practice test' sections of barron (you can use any other books) and free ETS online prep tool to simulate real test experience

In my opinion, the sooner the better. But before you schedule for your first test, make sure you see through the test structure and topics to assess yourself about the appropriate duration of preparing for the test. Make sure you have at least 30 - 45 days before the test (some would say 2 months). It would also depend on how much time you have (also if you are simultaneously working) to channel to GRE prep. About the number of times to take the GRE, it all depends on your satisfaction and ofc the competitiveness of your admission department. As for me, I sat twice. The first time (back in July) was much of a 'trial' you know. It was quite nerve-racking (it's the first time!), all my friends said "It's difficult!!!", plus I really didn't know much about the 'real' difficulty of GRE (compared to preparation materials I used). But for the second time (in Oct) things got much much better- I was not at all nervous for the second time, I knew what to expect and what are my weaknesses to work on. Good luck on your prep!!