Good sources to prep for the Reading comprehension section of the GRE

[Quasar C]

Hi friends,

I am applying for a Masters in Financial Engineering program in November, 2016 at Singapore, which is due to start in June 2017. I have my GRE scheduled for 10/17/2016 (that's two months from now). I would like to focus my GRE prep on the verbal section - especially RC, Text completions and Sentence equivalences. Given that I am a CompSci graduate and have passed my CFA(Chartered Financial Analyst) II with an interest in science and math, I would also like to read passages that I'm uncomfortable with. What are some really good sources that I must read from daily to work on my reading comprehension skill? Also, are there any sites offering more practice passages?

Thanks in advance,

Quasar.

Edited August 17, 2016 by Quasar C

[GREMasterEMPOWERRichC]

HI Quasar.,

From your post, it sounds like you're planning to do lots and lots of GRE Verbal questions and try to self-teach to a higher score. While that could work out for you, you would likely find it faster and easier to invest in a GRE Course of some type. The GRE Verbal sections are just as consistent and predictable as the Quant sections are - the prompts are written in a standard fashion, the "big" vocabulary comes from a large (but limited) list of words, the question types are consistent and even the wrong answer choices fall into predictable patterns. This is all meant to say that the proper Course materials will teach you all of those patterns, how to take advantage of them and a number of little 'secrets' to the Verbal section that you probably won't learn on your own.

1) Have you taken a practice MST Test yet? If you have, then how did you score? If you have not, then you can download 2 for free from www.gre.org

2) What is your goal score?

GRE Masters aren't born, they're made,

Rich

[Brent@GreenlightGRE]

You might like our free GRE course. The verbal modules have tons of videos and practice questions. 

- Sentence Equivalence

- Text Completion

- Reading Comprehension

I hope that helps.

Cheers,

Brent

[DogsArePeopleToo]

I'd read The Atlantic Monthly, they always have high-quality content because it started as a publication "for the thinking person."

Also good is the NY Times Book Review and The New Yorker.

[Brent@GreenlightGRE]

If you're looking for interesting, GRE-like content, here are some suggestions.

For Science passages, try:

• New Scientist
• Nature
• National Geographic
• Popular Mechanics
• Scientific American

 

For Humanities/Social Sciences, try:

• Washington Post
• New York Times
• Guardian
• Atlantic Monthly
• The New Yorker

Cheers,

Brent

 

 

Edited August 21, 2016 by Brent@GreenlightGRE
removed spaces

[Vince Kotchian GRE Prep]

Also, try doaj.org for academic journals, from which the GRE adapts many of its passages.

I would disagree with some of the above commentators; IMO, there aren't *any* RC passages or questions written by test-prep companies that are good practice for the real GRE. I only recommend using ETS-written passages and questions, and seeking to understand them deeply rather than just get questions right.

[AKstar]

(Q-170,V-157)
Hi,

I used some of the following resources to score a score of 157(not so great, but satisfactory for me), adding a few tips which may be of help:

• Practice reading from a screen if you're not used to it, that'd increase your reading speed, read a few articles from New York Times every day.
• Start practicing RCs and SCs as soon as you're done with even the basic word lists; for memorising words I found www.memrise.com to be a great resource.
• For learning the strategies to solve RCs, I used Magoosh which was particularly helpful. I went through their video lessons, especially for RCs several times and made sure I watched video explanations of questions I got wrong. 
• Apart from these, you should obviously practice from the Official Guide and if needed, supplement it with Manhattan guide for RCs

Happy prepping!

 

[Siddharth Pandey]

Hey there!

For alll of the verbal questions I'd recommend Manhattan prep.It contains the best questions of each of these kind.You could buy their guides for text completions and sentence equivalence as well as reading comprehension to gain a better understanding of the strategies and tactics involved in answering the questions as well as more questions.Then go for the Manhattan 5 lb.It contains close to 400-500 verbal questions across all the three types! For challenging articles I'd recommending the following sources :

The Atlantic : http://www.theatlantic.com/world/

The New Yorker : http://www.newyorker.com/

Arts and letters daily : http://www.aldaily.com/

Apart from these there's another site which contains challenging material.In each of these sites instead of reading the general news try to read the esoteric articles on arts and history , the universe like dark matter and blackholes , biology , medicine etc. like this one : https://aeon.co/ideas/gravitational-waves-will-bring-the-extreme-universe-into-view

By the way have you heard of Magoosh? It definitively provides one of the best test online test prep services where you get hundreds of video lessons and thousands of practice questions on both quant and verbal for only $99! It is way more economical than the other prep services out there and is truly worth every penny! I recently studied from magoosh and scored 329! You can sign up for a magoosh membership here.

http://gre.magoosh.com/

Also let me direct you to a collection of articles on the magoosh blog which would be useful to you

http://magoosh.com/gre/2015/gre-article-of-the-month-roundup/