How I Earned a 169 (V) and 165 (Q)

[ctg7w6]

Hello, everybody! I know there are quite a few topics like this, but I wanted to share anyway. Also, I know I don't have a perfect score, but I think it's pretty darn good, so maybe someone can learn from my studying method for the GRE.

Little background: Just finished a master's degree in military history. Did a lot of writing, so I did NOT study AT ALL for the AWA. I expect a pretty good score, but just so everyone knows, the AWA will not be in this guide.

I studied for four months while working full time 40-50 hours per week and also working on papers for publication. I spent about 2 hours a day during the week and 4-7 hours on each weekend day or holiday. I don't think it could have been done much faster, honestly, because you can only absorb so much material and not get burned out. It could also have taken longer, if need be, but I was already forgetting material because of how long I was taking, so I don't know. Four months was a good balance between how much material there was... By the end I was getting burned out and not wanting to study, however.

Study Materials Used:

• Magoosh Video Guides
• Magoosh Practice Questions
• Official GRE Guide
• Official GRE Quantitative and Verbal Guides
• Kaplan Premier 2016 (skip this it sucked and was pointless)
• Manhattan Set of 8 Prep Guides
• Manhattan 5 pound book
• Set of 6 Manhattan practice tests (quantitative only)
• The Verbal Grail
• LSAT Tests (Reading Comprehension Only)

 

The first thing I did was I sat down and watched all of the Magoosh videos. All of them. I don't regret that, but I didn't learn THAT much from them because I had never done any practice problems. Plus, the problems in Magoosh are pretty hard (for quantitative). But, it was a nice introduction to the material, though it probably took up more time than it should have.

Then I did the Kaplan review portions of that book. It sucked. Never picked it up again.

Then I did the review sections and the practice problems of the official guide so that I could see what actual questions looked like and I would know what to discount when I used non-ETS material. This was essential. I did not do any official practice tests. I saved ALL of them for the end because I was not interested in seeing progress... I knew I was progressing by virtue of working so hard and doing so many practice questions (I don't mean it to sound arrogant, but I looked at practice tests as additional practice problems, not a way to gauge what I would actually receive).

Then I did the 6 Manhattan Prep guides and all practice problems (but not the hundreds of problems in the books that teach skills, but are not really in the format of the test). The review sections were good for math. The verbal books (both) were pretty lousy. Just read them, that's it, no practice problems.

Then I did the five pound book, but only the math chapters because Manhattan sucks at verbal. Instead, I did the Verbal Grail book concurrently. It was pretty decent, but didn't really improve my skills. Still worth doing, I think, but its impact was very limited. 

By the time I finished the 5 pound book and the Verbal Grail I decided to finally tackle the Magoosh problems. The math problems are REALLY hard compared to the real thing. The verbal problems are the most similar to the test that you will find, but are quite a bit easier. 

When I ran out of Magoosh verbal problems I was a little distraught. I really needed a good verbal score, not really a good quant score. Also, my weakness was reading comprehension. I had used the Magoosh vocabulary app, but only for a few days... It would have been a pretty good help, but my vocabulary was fine and honestly, the test doesn't really test hard vocabulary. The app is great if you want to be thorough, however, and especially if your vocabulary isn't too large. But anyway, reading comprehension was my downfall.

Then I read some advice from somewhere (can't remember where) that LSAT practice tests had the hardest sets of reading comprehension you can find. This seems very much to be true! So, I got a bunch of the LSAT tests. I did the reading comprehension from tests 1-6. The LSAT was easier back in the day, so I didn't fare too badly. Then I found out that the later tests are harder. So, I did tests 45 through 65. Yes, they were very hard. Each passage is a long passage, so you get crazy experience with long passages and it makes GRE short passages really simple. If you can do decently on the LSAT tests, you will do amazing on the GRE reading comp. I was missing about 1 to 4 questions out of 27 on each LSAT test by the end (down from 7-9 in the beginning). It seems like not such a great score, missing 4 out of 27, but trust me... Basically every question is harder than anything you will find on the GRE.

While finishing up the LSAT tests, I went back and re-did every missed problem in the 5 pound book (quant) and Magoosh (both sections) until I had completed all of them. Also, I re-watched Magoosh videos for topics that I was still not understanding. Then I also did all of the practice sets in the two official guides (verbal and quant). 

The last two weeks before the test I did the ten practice tests that I had (4 official, 6 manhattan). I skipped AWA on all of them, and only did quantitative on the Manhattan tests (subbing in more LSAT tests). I took the full official tests (minus AWA).

My scores on the official practice tests were slightly lower than my official score. The Manhattan quant practice scores were significantly lower (5 points). I did all practice tests timed.

So what worked? Magoosh videos and practice problems, 5 pound book, the three official guides, and LSAT practice tests.

This won't work for everyone, of course. But if you struggle with reading comp, DO THE LSAT TESTS! For quantitative, just keep doing as many problems as possible. You should even review questions you got right (but I never did). 

What would I have done differently? I can't complain about the verbal... At the end I was doing better in reading comp than I was in sentence completion, which blew my mind. Not sure how to fix that one, there just aren't many sources for that stuff. Magoosh problems were closest to the real thing, but most of them were much easier. For quantitative, I heard that doing GMAT problems would really help because they are harder than the GRE (I can't confirm this). I do know that after doing Magoosh quant problems, the real ones seemed so simple. In the end, honestly, I just got kind of tired doing the math and didn't work on the areas that I knew I was weak in, even at the end. I knew my score would be good enough if it was over 156 or so, so I didn't really worry in the end. But I was already confident I would hit 160, so there is that.

Once I get my writing score I will know if I messed up by not practicing that at all, but whatever.

Oh! There is one thing that differed significantly from my practice. The real test is LOOOOONNNNGGGGGGG. In my practice tests I always skipped the 1 hour of AWA and I obviously didn't have a research section... I would say that I wish I had done a few tests under the actual 4.5 hour time constraint, but it was so grueling on test day that I think it may have broken my spirit (sounds pathetic, but it might be true). My energy never flags on tests (I like taking tests lol), but by the last section on the GRE, I was just wanting it to be over. It took a great deal of willpower to maintain focus. I did skip breaks, but I don't really think that affected me. It did force me to stop caring what my final score was. That's not to say I stopped trying, I still gave it my all even at the end, but I finally got over the last part of test anxiety at the very end, just from the sheer exhaustion of the test. I took the GRE back in 2010 (and did almost as well as this time), and it's 3.5 hours was absolutely easily manageable (I even took it after ZERO sleep the night before), but this test was GRUELING.

Well, I hope this helps somebody. I read a post like this when I started studying 4 months ago... It's here somewhere on the forums, the guy got a 338 and wrote up a guide like this. Obviously he did better than I did, but I still think that my little guide gets in a few points that aren't in his (i.e. DO THE LSAT TESTS lol).

Good luck to future test takers! Now, I'm going to go veg out on some computer games or sleep or something that shuts down my mind haha!

[Vince Kotchian GRE Prep]

Thanks for the post - I think you touch on something important for others to know: after exhausting the ETS books, cross-train with GMAT and/or LSAT verbal. GMAT math problem solving questions are great cross-training, too.