4 years ago, I got a Q149/V158 what should I do different this time?

[dmacfour]

What I did the first time: Studied the quant section of a Kaplin book for a week. Got a 158 verbal and a 149 quantitative. I think I forgot to finish the essay portion because none of the applications required it. I felt kind of crappy about the quant, but got in to my school of choice anyways. 

Because PhD programs are more competitive (and as a matter of pride), I need to nail it this go around. I've given myself at least 6 months to prepare, but am kind of lost at the moment.

Materials I have: My old 2012 Kaplin GRE book, Princeton Review Cracking the GRE 2016, some other quant focused study guide from 2012. I've put maybe 12-15 hours into the Princeton book so far. It's helped with basic math review, but I'm kind of nervous about bringing up that score of 149.

Is there something better I could be doing to study for the quant? Are those other two books worth keeping around?

 

[7-11 Coffee]

I highly recommend Manhattan's 5 pounder. When I used Princeton and Kaplan I found them to be too easy, and in the end the actual test was indeed much more challenging than the typical practice sets they provide.

I also reviewed the free material from ETS. I think other posters would agree with me that their sample tests are very close to the real thing. I also suggest you dont make the same mistake as me and only prepare one week before the exam (chronic procrastinator here)! Good luck to you!

[dmacfour]

13 hours ago, 7-11 Coffee said:

I highly recommend Manhattan's 5 pounder. When I used Princeton and Kaplan I found them to be too easy, and in the end the actual test was indeed much more challenging than the typical practice sets they provide.

I also reviewed the free material from ETS. I think other posters would agree with me that their sample tests are very close to the real thing. I also suggest you dont make the same mistake as me and only prepare one week before the exam (chronic procrastinator here)! Good luck to you!

That was my mistake the first time - crammed for a week the first time around. As you can imagine, my scores were less than desirable.

[kaybee8]

I second the advice to get the Manhattan book and download the ETS software.  The software has a couple of practice exams that you can do using actual testing conditions, and they're really helpful.  Nothing else I did approximated test day conditions more closely.

I also highly recommend Magoosh, if you haven't looked into it already.  If you give yourself 3 months and use the Magoosh resources, you should be very, very prepared.  Good luck!

[sjoh197]

Your verb score looked pretty good, but regardless, I found that printing out the top 100 gre vocab and going over them at random times over a period of a few weeks really boosted my verbal score (I managed to get a 165). The vocab is pretty predictable and there are tons of websites with consistent lists. 

Also, really learning the style of the quant section is important. Do a lot of practice tests. I bought books with tons of practice tests in them.  And the advice about skipping over problems you can't do quickly and coming back to them is really great advice.