GRE verbal bad score!help!

[nick_]

Hi guys,

I am an international student wishing to apply for a MA in Communication for next fall.

I took the GRE last thursday scoring really bad: 143 Verbal and 143 Quantitative. I was surprised to get such bad scores because when I took the test at home the weeks before preparing the GRE my scores were on average around 151 for both sections!!

So... I am gonna take the test again. As foreign native speaker, I know the Verbal section is the hardest one for me and I think I have to focus more on this, but how? I was wondering if you have some suggestions about the next week to prepare the test again particularly about the Verbal section!

Help!!!

[budgiepie]

Reading well-written arguments will help out for the passage analysis problems. For the words Baron's word list (if you can attain a copy somehow) wass really useful for me, even with hours to go.

[iowaguy]

You likely would have better success putting your efforts into trying to bring up your 143 Q score rather than your 143 V score. Verbal takes a lot longer to improve (months - mostly vocab) whereas the quantitative score can be dramatically improved in just a few weeks by learning/reviewing some math concepts, formulas, etc.

But, as you're going into communications, maybe you need a bigger verbal for that. I improved 150 points (on the old scale) by mastering 5000 flash card words. But you probably don't have time for that. Still, you can learn the most common GRE words (Manhattan 500 essential words, etc) in a couple of weeks before your test if you study them every day. Also practicing some on-screen reading comprehension should help your score...

Have you taken both Powerprep computer practice tests? (Or maybe your GRE is paper-based since you're not in the states?)

[nick_]

Hi guys and thank you so much for both answers.

I just took the Powerprep computer practice test and I took the computer based test 'cause it is available in Italy, the country where I am from.

Actually I am focusing on the Barron GRE wordlists, creating flashcard with all those words and keep exercising with them. I hope it helps.. Do you think it is a good strategy? Beside this, I ll obviously continue pratice with reading comprenshion and quantitative section.