GRE Verbal Score

[navybluedreams]

So I've been studying for my GREs, and my verbal scores have been plummeting as of late. I slowly peaked at 154 a few weeks ago and today, I scored a 145, even though I felt confident in my work ethic and strategy. I've been studying with Kaplan, and I'm not sure what else to do. It's primarily the text completion portion that's been troubling me. It's a bit unnerving, especially since programs value the verbal scores, AND I wanted to take my exam within the next month.
Anyone have any heavenly advice about study tools/tricks/sources that helped them through the verbal portion? Thanks!

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[cosmos51]

ETS offers two practice exams that allow you to stop and pause in the middle of the tests. They are downloadable and really allowed me more time to break down the questions. It helped me to better understand "How to take the test" more than vocabulary.

 

[Carson Ranger]

At this point you're probably as prepared as you're going to be. Just be well-rested and well-fed on test day -- and well-caffeinated if you like it.

 

[ptlover]

Magoosh gre vocab app and magoosh.Com

 

[montevik]

I second Magoosh, its a free vocab flashcard app. Learn as many vocab words as you can.

What I think bogged me down was losing stamina during the reading portions. It's hard to really recreate the test in its actual conditions.

 

[DesertPT]

Your huge downward slide in scores tells me that this has more to do with a change in your test-taking ability/mindset/psychological state/tiredness, etc. than it does to do with your knowledge. So I don't think memorizing vocab lists is going to be very high yield. All I can say is consider what has changed since you got the 154 and do the best you can on as many practice tests as possible.

 

[DesertPT]

And I'll agree with the being well-rested....the GRE is a test of mental stamina as much as anything.

 

[buckslib]

best thing I suggest for verbal if you are limited for time is to just focus on vocab. go with Princeton Reviews word list and supplement it with Spectacular Vernacular's flashcards. Rhymes get stuck in your head, thatll give you that extra confidence boost you need on test day:

Amazon product

http://www.flashnotes.com/PA/carneg...-001/flashcards/spectacular-vernacular/27823/

 

[Romazicon]

My verbal was horrible (145) and my quantitative was 157 and I still got into all of the PT school schools that I applied. Remember, they look at your application as a whole.

 

[davidtheusername]

Some of the kaplan practice tests are crazy. I got a 170 verbal on one of the ETS tests and I think I 169 on the other. On the Kaplan one I took I got in the mid-150's or something like that. My actual score ended up being 169 on the real test. I guess Kaplan wants to scare us to death so we overpay and take their classes. The ETS scores are your closest approximation of reality.