hitchhiker

Learn some memory tricks too. There are tons of sites on the web that will help you with this.

Although you have great LORs, research experience etc, it's likely that other candidates will have the same. I'd retake if I were you. The quant and AW are pretty low in percentile terms, honestly.

Magoosh has been great for verbal.

FYI I have not translated the original fragment, it's the author's translation. The issue here is not whether it is acceptable to you or anyone else, the issue here is clarity of communication. The translated version tells it like it is and does not try to obfuscate. The financial services industry has tried to make things look abstract and complex in order to fool people, and people have gotten fooled. I have seen many pieces of academic writing in which it's next to impossible to understand what the author is trying to say, and I sometimes got the feeling that the writers themselves did not know. They simply try to get published one way or another and I know many academics will back me up on this.

Many people here have said that 'scholarly writing' is difficult to understand and hence appropriate for the GRE. But It's obvious that 'scholarly writing' can be totally misleading, look at the example and translation created by the author: We will experience a strong upturn in our revenues with significant long-term upside potential through a pioneering and aggressive real-estate financial leveraging strategy that dramatically increases home-ownership rates across the nation. The strategy will expand our customer base to include a traditionally underserved and untapped market, subprime customers, who will benefit from the provision of maximum financial leverage with minimal bureaucratic requirements. This strategy will result in the building of tangible asset bases for these customers, and these assets can subsequently function as real estate collateral against further leverage that will stimulate consumer spending, thereby aiding the growth of the national economy indefinitely. Sub-prime defaults will not be a cause for concern because of the introduction of innovative derivative financial instruments. Called Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS), Credit Default Swaps (CDS) and Collaterialized Debt Obligations (CDO), these instruments will serve as risk mitigators and protective hedges against any defaults that occur. In the event of the economy undergoing a downturn, the federal government is expected to perform a guarantor role. Translation: New profit-making strategy to rely on giving out bad loans We will get new customers and earn big money by giving home-loans to people who don’t have jobs, incomes or assets. They won’t even have to put down a deposit or give us any documents. These people will almost certainly not be able to repay us. These risky customers will then use their still-unpaid-for homes as collateral to spend more, getting even deeper into debt. We assume this cycle will continue forever, and will somehow be good for the country. But since our bank will be at risk, we will sell off these bad loans to investors chasing high returns, or we’ll take out insurance on the loans. Bottom line: We win big either way – by selling off the loans, or by collecting insurance. If everything goes bust, the government will bail us out.

Make sure you get enough sleep the night before. I read someplace that the difference between an A grade student and a C grade one (assuming roughly equal effort), was that the A grade student slept a couple of hours earlier than the C grade one.

Has anybody tried "subliminal affirmations" (eg "Every day in every way I am getting better at GRE" with a device like an ipod, and with what success? Is it a good idea to try, or a waste of time?