My advice on doing well on the GRE

[Bayesian1701]

I wrote this advice on the Magoosh facebook group and I thought I would post it here as well.  I took the test on August 25, 2017, and received 167Q/160V/4.0AWA.   I was nervous and I think I could have retaken and got a higher quant score but I felt like there isn't enough of a difference to adcoms between 167/170 to justify retaking in my case.  I definitely recommend Magoosh,  I actually tried it and canceled it in March until I realized there wasn't anything as good out there at a similar price (in my opinion).   

My magoosh predicted ranges were Q167-170 & V160-165. I had about 100 verbal questions left and I retook all missed quant questions. I took my first practice test in February, but I didn't start really studying until June. I don't have much verbal advice, but here are the books I used and the tests I took. I used the magoosh 90 day advanced plan from June to August. I did not do all the verbal practice in the plan since my target verbal score was 155. I also bought the Magoosh quant tutoring package, which I recommend. Overall, I feel that no practice tests accurately represent the 2nd hard quant section (for those who do well on the 1st section) beside the powerprep tests. I also recommend that in addition to watching the video explanations for the questions you miss and that you watch the videos for the questions you took longer than the average pace. I would also wait to retake missed problems until the very end of your practice, I remembered the answer to multiple problems. Below are the books and practice tests I used to prepare.
Books
Manhattan Prep 5 LB Book - Highly recommend anyone aiming for a 90%+ percentile on quant to do the last half of every chapter
ETS Official Guide
ETS Quant Practice Problems
ETS Verbal Practice Problems
Manhattan Prep Text Completion and Sentance Equilivance Strategy Guide - The words are very obscure, but it helped me learn how to guess better
Manhattan Prep Word Problems Strategy Guide - More helpful than I would have thought, great if you need more practice outside of Magoosh
Manhattan Prep Quantitative Comparison - also great if you need more QC practice
Nova GRE Math Prep Course - it has questions arranged by topic and difficulty. Contains around 200 hard and very hard problems. There are some typos, but most of the time they are pretty obvious
I did not use the GMAT official guide as suggested in the plan.
I bought the Ready4GRE app, but I don't recommend it.
Practice tests listed in order over 6 months
Kaplan- Q164/V155 (free), Looking back it was too easy
Manhattan Prep 1 (MP) - Q160/V155 In general, the MP quant section was WAY too hard, the verbal was pretty weird but the scores were pretty accurate for me. I felt the quant sections were demoralizing and made me feel like I wasn’t making progress.
MP 2 - Q163/V159
MP 3 - Q160/V160
ETS Paper 1 - Q165/V160
Magoosh Q167/V158
ETS Paper 2 - Q169/V159
Princeton Review - Q164/V162 (free) The second quant section felt accurate, but I felt it was graded too hard (I missed 3 questions total on quant).
Crunch Prep - (free) Q164/V157 The quant was weird, and they advertise that they grade AWA but they didn't grade mine before my trial ended
MP4- Q161/V161
The economist - Quit after the first section of quant, the question format and topics were way different from ETS material. It's the only free test I don't recommend.
MP5 - Q163/V156
Powerprep 1 - Q169/V159 - Quant was easy for me, but I thought the verbal was hard
Powerprep 2- Q166/V163 opposite of PP 1, quant had a few very hard questions

[lail2018]

Thank you! That was  a very helpful overview. 

[vince2020]

That was super helpful... I took my tests in 2017 (application for AU18) and did not study at all lol. My quant was fine (165) but I totally screwed up on Verbal (154) and writing (4.0). Hopefully I'll do better this year