How did you prep for GREs?

[RedPotato]

I want to take my GREs in the fall, and need to figure out the best way to prep. I can find enough money to take a class, but i don't know if its worth it. I also know there are books.

So what worked for you? What didn't? And Why?

[mrkupe]

If you're decent at studying, go buy a book. I suggest Barron's as it offers the most comprehensive review for the verbal section and gives you enough to get by in quantitative. I had 10 days to study up for the GRE (most of which involved teaching myself all of the math) and I imagine my 710V/730Q owes something to the solid preparation that Barron's gave me.

Classes typically don't teach you anything that you can't find in a book - but they're helpful for getting you to focus on studying for the GRE and of course they reinforce the concepts that you're trying to learn on your own. If you have issues with test prep, then a class might just do the trick. If you don't take one, though, don't sweat it - there aren't any master secrets to this test that will be revealed upon payment of your class fees.

As far as study habits go . . .study your word lists. The bigger the list, the better (this is where Barron's REALLY pays off). If you end up doing well on the test, you ARE going to run into some of the words you find on these lists. Get used to making fast decisions on any verbal question that isn't reading comprehension, cause you're going to want to take time to evaluate the ones that are and frankly, I couldn't really find an easier way to beat those questions than careful reading. Quantitative is easy to prep for by comparison. Make sure you memorize your formulas and practice using the geometric equations in creative ways to solve those problems, and you really can't go too wrong there.

Good luck.

[rufzilla]

It really all depends on your study habits and if you can push yourself to really study the books diligently. Like the above poster I just bought some of the Barron's GRE books and brushed up on my math skills and studied the vocabulary. I didn't study much and really just crammed a week or so before the test and got a decent score of 1200-1250 total, so not so bad. But, at least for my case, a class would have been good because it would have kept me on task and really pushed me to learn the material and soak it in rather than just skimming it.

Also, if whether you just get books or take classes make sure to study how to take the test. I'm not the greatest test-take (I just try to get it over with as fast as possible), so I think that if I learned how to take the test more effectively I definitely would have gotten a better score. Also, and I'm not sure what discipline your getting into, but as an English major, the writing section of the test was very different and difficult for me. It has to do more with having sound logic than being super eloquent, so also study how to do that section as well.

[Jakrabite]

I will echo the advice about barron's. I crammed the book for a month and managed 1500. The barron's wordlist is pretty extensive and will make you feel more confident. Word to the wise though, don't be fooled into thinking that it covers everything. I had a couple of words in my actual test which I didn't find in any of the prep books. The last week I just studied the frequently occuring wordlist and a list that I had compiled of words that troubled me. Also, in the last few days I kept taking tests on the powerprep cd and scored pretty much exactly as my final test. I feel the classes for GRE are a rip off, it's a personal opinion and I may be wrong. Also, the test really doesn't indicate anything about your intelligence, just how you managed that particular test on that particular day. I know people who scored 1200 once and took the test again and got 1400+. So don't let a low score bum you out (and vice versa let a high score give you an ego trip ).

[glasscandie]

I'm taking a Princeton Review tutoring course, and I'm finding it to be helpful for me. I need to get my quant. up, so basically my classes are tailored to the quant. section, and I'm just memorizing words. There are some helpful tips that a tutoring class gave me on the verbal section that I hadn't been able to find in a book (e.g. what to do if you don't know any of the words, of if you only know 1 of the words, etc.).

I've also been going to freerice.com. It's kind of addictive, and it's for a good cause - and a lot of the words that show up on that site I've found in my GRE books.

[glasses]

I seriously think the classes are a waste of money. Three books (ETS, Kaplan, Princeton Review), the Barron's word list (which you can find for free online, which is where I got it), ridiculously long night-time studying schedules, and tons of practice tests landed me a 1450, and I'm a horrible standardized-test taker (seriously, I'm abysmal--it doesn't come naturally to me at all). As for the essay, just write the most formulaic thing possible: that landed me a 6.0. Those practice tests are crucial, and just keep taking them no matter how well or horribly you do--my scores kept going up and down during the practice tests. I scored everything from a 1000 to a 1600. It's like learning how to play a game--after a certain point, all you can do is play it over and over again until the rhythms become natural.

Oh, and try to take the test in a sort of "realistic" way--nothing around you, nothing to fidget with, none of your vices or comforts around. I think I could have scored higher if I'd done this--I don't have a PC, so I wasn't able to take it in a controlled environment of my own; not to mention, I'm a smoker and took my practice tests with an ample supply of cigarettes by my side. Through the last half of the test, I began to find the testing center creepily quiet (unlike the friend's house where I took my practice tests), and I almost went mad reaching for cigarettes that of course were not and could not be there.

[glasscandie]

I agree that mostly everything I'm learning in tutoring can be found in one of the practice books. However, my time is constrained - 3 year old daughter, one almost full-time internship (plus a recently accepted summer internship, which'll make 2), plus f/t school - it's nice having tips and tricks laid out for me and specific answers to questions as I come across them for problems. I'd do it again.

[priesj]

I would second what Glasses said.

I just kept on taking the two practice test that ETS sends you when you register for the GRE. If you are the least bit mathematically inclined, I think that's all that's necessary for the quantitative section. It's more about knowing how to look at the questions rather than doing the math. This method worked to a lesser degree for the verbal section. The best way to improve in this section is learn the word lists. I just used the test as an excuse to read some novels, hoping my vocabulary would improve.

I went from scoring around 600/400 when I first took the practice tests to consistently scoring around 800/600. (I actually practiced with one test until I started scoring at the level I wanted to. Then I took the other test to make sure my scores weren't a result of becoming familiar with the questions). When I took the real test I scored 790/630 which is about what I expected going into it. So that's, a 400 point improvement just by familiarizing myself with the test.

I did by some books but I can't say that I read them at all. I also found the practice test included in the books are not very representative of the actual test. Generally they are more difficult and under report your score. If you have friends that have taken the GRE in previous years, see if they still have their CD with the practice tests on it.

Funny story...When I was taking the test, I accidentally kicked my computer's power cord when I was about half way done and the computer turned off. :shock: I was so scared. Luckily, the computers are set up to save your progress as you go. Still, my nerves were a bit rattled and I don't think the incident improved my score at all.

[natofone]

I studied vocab and memorized all of the math rules, then I took practice tests until I got a perfect score in 3 in a row. The practice exams are far easier than the real deal. I ended up with a 720v, 730q, 6w. I spent maybe 3 months of weekly practice tests. My initial practice exam was only about an 1150 so my scores went up considerably with practice.

[Tobson]

I second the "Barrons" - it is a good book -especially the practice CD.

[djrg]

I used Kaplan's book and Practice CD... it proved to be enough for me! I recommend it

[UnlikelyGrad]

The Barron's book was my favorite, too, but I think that only Princeton Review teaches the test-taking tricks; those can be real time savers! FWIW, I got 790V & 800 Q...

[Michelley262003]

A class is sooo not worth it. Get books, practice exams etc. Do all the practice you can get. I took the test twice. I knew the programs I was applying for would look at my two highest scores. The first time I focused on the verbal and entirely neglected the math. I made a 600 on the Verbal. I took it again, this time focusing on the math. I made a 680.

My overall score was good in that it got me into a variety of schools.

[nandelle]

I worked teaching SAT prep classes - the math is essentially the same level (only differences are the CAT test vs the paper test, and you can't use a calculator on the GRE). I ended up working a bajillion SAT math problems, and then I took practice tests/used prep books to work GRE problems.

I've always tested well in english and writing, so I brushed up on the vocab with the Kaplan vocab in a box thing, and two prep books. I also practiced writing essays in the time limit using the prompts that they post on the website. I ended up getting super lucky, and one of the prompts I used to practice actually ended up being the one I got on the exam.

I wound up with a 690V, 800Q, and 5.5 writing, which I was happy with.

[RedPotato]

Thank you everyone! This was so helpful. If anyone else would like to share their 2 cents, that would be appreciated as well.

[fuzzylogician]

As an international, I knew my major issue would be the vocab, so I took about 3 months to memorize as many of them as I could. I'm one of those people who memorize best by actually writing down whatever it is I need to remember, so I made myself hundreds of these little flashcards with a word+definition on them, which I would take everywhere with me. I used to take them out in the subway, in line to the dentist or whatever, between classes - you wouldn't believe how many times a day you just waste 5-10 minutes waiting on something.

I got myself the Kaplan GRE book for math/vocab problem solving strategies and was very pleased. I only thought that their writing section wasn't thorough enough. Math wasn't really a problem for me so I spent maybe a week going over tips and solving a few of the problem sets in the book just to make sure I had it right. For the other parts I crammed about 2-3 weeks and tried to solve all of the problems in the book. In the last week or so I just solved the sample tests you get from ETS when you register and the ones on the Kaplan CD.

I ended up scoring V670/Q740/AW4.5, which I wasn't particularly pleased with, but did get me into everywhere I wanted so I guess it was OK. I scored 120/120 on the TOEFL so that should have helped "fix" the low writing score.

[liszt85]

The vocab was problematic for me too and I don't think it has anything to do with being an international student. Its just that these words are never used in daily life and very rarely even in literature! I decided to apply to grad school pretty late and hadn't planned anything at all. So I ended up getting more than a week's time (~10 days) for preparation. I'm good at math, so didn't do anything for that part, just solved two sample papers. For the vocab, due to the time constraint, what I did was I looked at the high frequency word list. I then looked at words starting with the vowels (high occurrence) and some consonants like s t p l. So I ended up doing around 20 wordlists out of the 50 given in Barrons. I also looked at a blog that uploads high frequency words for the month. One word from that actually appeared on the test!

I ended up with a 610V/780Q/5.0AWA. I lost 20 points on the quant due to the state of mind I was in.. I unexpectedly got too many questions based on graphs and histograms which were easy but time consuming, esp due to lack of practice. So I ended up having to do around 5-6 questions in the last 2 minutes or so. I managed to actually solve only 3 of them and had to guess the answers to the last 2-3 questions which I guess was also responsible for the lost points. So its important to pace yourself well during the test and that can be achieved by doing a lot of practice tests and getting familiar with the type of questions asked. There is nothing really more to that.

[elenlin]

I agree that practice books really did it for me - at least one hour a day for a month with the Princeton Review and the Kaplan Math and Verbal books (I especially liked the Kaplan). As a supplement to studying verbal, I also suggest reading some Michael Chabon novels. I happened to be reading Kavalier and Clay while I was studying and noticed that, in addition to being a really excellent novel, it has about one or two GRE words on every page. Reading it really helped reinforce the vocabulary I learned.

[noojens]

Anyone have advice or strategies for preparing for the writing section?

I scored a 4.5 last time, which I'm fine with or whatever, but it would be nice to at least understand how that damn section is scored.

[liszt85]

Anyone have advice or strategies for preparing for the writing section?

I scored a 4.5 last time, which I'm fine with or whatever, but it would be nice to at least understand how that damn section is scored.

I got a 5.0, so not much higher than you. I guess fuzzylogician is the person who can answer this for us. She scored a 6.0!

Edit: I have no idea how that got into my head, my apologies fuzzylogician! I mixed the 120/120 toefl score with the AWA score :| Looks like there is no correspondence between TOEFL scores and the AWA scores. I scored 118/120 (lost 2 points on the speaking section, as expected. Indians have a weird accent and I am no exception).

As preparation for that section, I read a few tips given in the barrons book. Didn't know what else to do

So the question remains an open one.

[fuzzylogician]

Edit: I have no idea how that got into my head, my apologies fuzzylogician! I mixed the 120/120 toefl score with the AWA score :|

No harm done, haha! I wish I had a good explanation for my bad AWA score. I actually did a double take when I first saw it but since I already had my TOEFL score I decided not to let it bother me too much. I guess I didn't spend as much time preparing for the writing section as I should have. I've always been a skillful writer - it's one of the strong points everyone always commends my papers on and I've won awards for it - so I only wrote about 4-5 practice essays and assumed it was enough. Obviously, I was wrong. I have no idea how the essays are scored, but I suspect that my score suffered because of "cosmetic" factors - maybe my indentation wasn't what they expected or I had too few/many paragraphs, maybe I should have used key words from the prompt instead of synonyms. Who knows.

[zourah]

I believe it's looking for the ability to

1) state a thesis (preferably in the first sentence, definitely in the first paragraph)

2) identify two to four supporting points (anecdotes, facts, observations) and give them a short paragraph each

3) conclude by pointing these middle arguments back to the core thesis and

4) do so in coherent English.

I remember writing a completely generic argument on something like "change is good," but I used this "5-paragraph outline" format that I'd learned in junior high school and got a 6.

This is not an exercise in finding talented future novelists, nor is it really an exercise in good writing - just a test of being able to make a point coherently. Pick an answer to the prompt, no matter how patently simple, and then back it up neatly, and you're good to go. Don't worry about subtlety of analysis - think about making sure the readers understand your point and will feel that you've persuaded them to adopt that same view in some way.

[noojens]

Thanks folks!

What about rudimentary things like sentence structure? I remember using a lot of semi-complicated stuff like prepositional phrases and semicolons in my AW section. Is it best to keep it simple? I mean it's graded at least in part automatically, and writing algorithms to recognize good grammar ain't easy. Microsoft's been trying for a decade plus with only middlingly successful results, so how good could the GRE software really be?

[zourah]

What about rudimentary things like sentence structure? I remember using a lot of semi-complicated stuff like prepositional phrases and semicolons in my AW section. Is it best to keep it simple?

I have no idea about this. I'm one of those crazy people who actually use semicolons casually, but I remember trying to keep myself simple (not stupid, just simple), so I have no idea to what degree my personal style helped or hurt.

[europegrad]

I had to take a GMAT instead, but some much of its issues are the same as GRE's (except for word sections which are replaced by critical reasoning and sentence completion). It paid very well for me to spend a lot of time learning the underlying logic of the common-type questions on verbal section. It's hard to get them (specially as I'm a non-native speaker who had never lived in English-speaking country before apart from exchange program), but after a lot of 'informed pratice' one can start to understand the implications, assumptions and general framework of the most awkward verbal exercises.

When it comes to the quantitative section, I took revision on lot of topics of high school math, since calcs are not allowed and many questions deal with multipliers, factores, divisibility or could at least have their resolution fastened by using those concepts. They don't use so much question-type variations and it is feasible to get the pratice it requires to solve, let's say, up to the 65th percentile questions without thinking that much. GRE's and GMAT's quant sections cover essentialy the same topics; only GRE has quantity comparison questions and only GMAT has data sufficiency questions.

I bought some books: Princeton Review (Crack GMAT, Verbal Pratice, Math Pratice), Official Guide for GMAT and KAPLAN (800 series). I took tons os mock tests (good ones), and could see my progress somehow.

In that important day, I was having hard headache, and did not so well as I was then expecting on quantitative section. On the verbal section, I got it right, my overal score is 730 (96%). Verbal score was 99.6%. Got admitted on European-top department with full funding.