GRE Quant 800 Verbal 720 Experience and Preparation

[carmine]

I just got the results for my GRE scores, and fortunately got Q 800, V 720, and W 6/6 , so I thought my preparation tips might benefit others who're preparing for the GRE. It took me about 3 weeks of nighttime and weekend studies.

The Verbal Part I started off with Barron's study guide, which is organized into easy to follow sub-sections. Initially, I perused the types of questions that are tested carefully (analogy relationships, antonyms, sc, and rc). Then, I attempted to get the answers right, with a dictionary on hand first. This helped me focus on the techniques, so that I knew that if only I know the vocabulary, I mostly answer correctly and in time. This process took about several days.

When my system worked satisfactorily well, it's time for the most important resources -- the vocabulary!

This was my biggest hurdle. I knew that if only I could ingest Barron's 3,900 words, my score would be no less than 650 (as a non-native speaker). However, I was despaired just after a couple of days of studying from the Barron's book. Quaint 4,000 words seemed like a humongous list I could never finish.

Fortuitously, I stumbled upon the Vocab Grapher software http://www.vocabgrapher.com.

I found it much easier to use Vocab Grapher. It has the best collection of word lists (though I only used their Barron's word list), very interesting customizable practice tests, great visualization of word clusters (GREAT), one of the most complete dictionaries, and SAMPLE GRE exams claimed to be from the real tests!!! I was so fortunate to have found this software, as I then got up to speed very quickly, and it was a great diversion from the tedious books and vocabulary studies. There are many other features such as short translations in my native language. Overall, it was really worth my money and I think everyone preparing for their GRE should have this.

Based on my exam, the multiple meanings of words can't be emphasized enough. For example, the word meretricious means, according to Barron's, attractive on the surface but of no real value, but it could also mean ..based on pretense (specious, gilded) and relating to a prostitute. The synonyms can range from specious/insincere to tawdry, gaudy, garish, and brassy. This wasn't readily clear to me, and probably to many non-native speakers. For the word officious, the program also shows the past analogy exam-- attentive:officious::refined:snobbish, which showed up identically in my real test. Obviously ETS reused their exam pool, so this kind of software, together with practices, really helps. Overall, I highly recommended 1. Vocab Grapher http://www.vocabgrapher.com ** 2. Barron's ** (all words in my test were from 1&2) 3. ETS Official GRE Book ** practice makes perfect. 4. Kaplan Verbal Workout (this didn't help me, but I think it'd give a good break when you're bored with 1&2)

I didn't use any other reference books/ software. I think using these 1-3 makes achieving 700 (or 650, depending on individual backgrounds) really achievable.

If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to post them, and I'll try to answer. I'll continue with how to ace the quantitative and analytical writing parts later.

[Highlife]

Getting an almost identical result being a non-native speaker, I just want to add some things to the previous post. It took me a months to learn the vocabulary and it was not really a lot of fun. I used the same guidebook and that helped a lot. I focussed on the 1,000 words highlighted in it.

Concerning the maths part. I have not done maths in the last 6 years, though I was doing well before that. I found the test not to test any maths knowledge past 2nd year of high school, however, the tricky thing is the timing.

With practicing and getting used to the different exercises you can really really speed up your response time. I did not time myself during my practice work, however, I tried to guess at first glance what the answer was and then tried to work it out mathematically. In the actual exam, I sometimes knew the answer before the page had fully loaded. Having time to spare sure helped in the last few questions which due to the computer adaptiveness of the test, were somewhat difficult.