Test approaching.. practice scores declining

[amyeray]

I'm taking the GRE on Tuesday and have been preparing for months. I planned on studying Friday-Sunday hardcore and resting on Monday but every time I take a practice test my scores go DOWN! Hopefully I'm just studying too much... does anyone have any entertaining quips? Knock-Knock jokes? Advice on how to calm down and rest before the test?

[purplepepper]

Definitely studying too much and starting to panic. Just put it down, you know what the test is like. Just relax and if you hate your score, you can always take it again!

[socialcomm]

It sounds like you have a good plan. Hopefully today you can relax a bit. I'm taking it tomorrow as well. It's hard to step away from it. I'm just going to try to look over roots one last time. Good luck!

[amyeray]

I did manage to sleep in, go out to lunch, and see "Inglorious Bastards" in place of studying today... the only time I thought about the GRE was when picking vocab words out of the film, but that has become involuntary. Thanks for the reply, good luck to you too!

[misterpat]

Burnout happens. Don't worry too much.

[swisnieski]

I assume you are taking new tests each time and not merely repeating the old ones? You will always do slightly worse than a test you've done before. Trust me, when test time comes, you will probably do better than the practice tests are predicting. Something about being in that testing booth with all the weight of your future bearing down on you MAKES you pay attention.

[broadinterests]

And I thought I was the only one. I started studying two months ago and my baseline tests led me to think I was doing fairly well. The first two practice tests I took were on paper out of the official ETS 10th edition book. I studied for about 30 more hours then took the free practice test on the Princeton Review site which says it is a CAT. My scores dropped about 150-180 points. I didn't panic, though I was a little depressed. I studied another week (about 20 more hours) and took another computer adaptive (it said it was computer adaptive... though I wonder if it is just computer not adaptive) on Peterson's site. My score dropped an additional 150 points. I recovered about 150 on my latest test (on computer) but am still way below what I was getting on the paper-based tests in the ETS book. The good news, my essays have stayed the same. Any ideas?

Broadinterests