Practice Exams = Reality?

[Trilt]

So I've started my lovely journey to prep for the GRE and I was curious about how reliable others had found scoring on online practice exams. Did you score higher/lower on the practice than the actual exam? I'm specifically prepping with a Princeton Review book and taking their tests, so if anybody has experience with those, that would be great.

From glancing through past threads, it looked like most people found the Kaplan practice exams harder than the real thing, but I didn't find any info on any of the other resources.

Also, I know there are a lot of "word of the day" resources out there, but does anybody know of something similar for the quantitative section? I'm relatively secure in my vocabulary but I really, really suck at the math questions from middle school. My calculator and I are very close friends.

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[lalzi22]

I know princeton review has a book called 1,041 math problems or something like that. Basically its a book with over 1000 practice math problems that come in sections such as "algebra" "trig" "geometry" etc.. also, the math is pretty similar to SAT math, so if you have any of those books still lying around you can do those math problems as well

 

[aspiringDVM]

Number2.com has a selection of math problems, and I'm pretty sure that they will email you a problem a day if you sign up for it.
As for accuracy, the computer adapted exams on CD that came with the Kaplan GRE book reflected my real score almost exactly.

 

[BlacKAT33]

Doing the practice math problems will definitely help. But it sounds like you have a fear of not using a calculator more than actually solving the problems. (not making fun of you, i felt the same way) I know it sounds stupid but the best way to get over this is to just get some basic problems or pick up a used math book. Basically with addition, subtraction, multiplication, division - with whole numbers, decimals, fractions, etc etc converting between the different kinds of numbers. Get familiar with doing the basic math (i mean, even more basic than the word problems that would accompany this math). And keep practicing until you can do it within 30 sec or less. Once you become really confident in this i'm sure the problems will becomes easier and you can do them faster. You can also move into inequalities and other stuff. It's annoying but you're Quantitative section won't improve until you feel really confident about not needing the calcuater and still doing the problems fast

 

[futureapppsy2]

The only GRE practice exams I found reliable and representive were the free ETS PowerPrep exams. For the quant section, I found it REALLY helpful to view the problems as a game of tricks and not math, and I found a combination of Princeton Review and the Kaplan Quant book to be REALLY helpful with figuring those out.

 

[Mereafterthough]

I used Kaplan for my prep and I did SIGNIFICANTLY better on the practice tests than I did in real life...it sucked. So I wouldn't use those tests, they just gave me false confidence.

 

[Minnerbelle]

Take the practice tests (2 or so i think) that ETS sends you when you sign up for the actual test. If I remember, it comes on a CD rom, and those are pretty accurate. It's a full length GRE sent by the ETS... so it's as close to the real thing you're going to get.

 

[Tiktaalik]

The ETS exams are representative, but you'll be a lot less stressed when taking them, and I found that this shifted my score up a bit from what it ended up actually being.

 

[UM2014]

The practice exam I took before the GRE ended up with a verbal score way higher then my quant. On my actual exam they were relatively even. I only took one practice exam though so maybe I was just having a bad math day. I was also pretty freaked out about not having a calculator since I've been trained to depend on one since 8th grade. I just started doing a lot of mental math in preparation like adding up grocery prices as I shopped and stuff like that since I was so rusty. It helped a lot and it was no problem on the exam once I took a deep breath. Good luck!

 

[StartingoverVet]

I did better than expected on verbal and slightly worse than expected on math (but not by much, both were high).

The biggest issue for me was that the practice tests weren't great at simulating the adaptive approach of the test. The practice tests only gradually got harder, but when I took the actual test the questions got hard right away. Maybe because I scored well, but it seemed like almost all the questions were challenging vs the practice test where at the beginning there were much easier one.s

I also had some math questions that I never saw anything like them previously and wasted a lot of time figuring out. Depending on how well do you this may not matter, but I was pretty surprised, and worn out by the end.

 

[Coquette22]

There's some practice tests either on the ETS website (I think), and those are the most helpful, I find. I used the Princeton Review book, which came with practice tests, but it wasn't so much the questions I found useful as it was the timer.

 

[ginger17317]

I was relatively good in math growing up, but I haven't had a math class in 4 years - I got a Barons book, read it cover to cover, did all the exercises. It was amazing how much math I had forgotten and how much that book helped.

I went to Borders and sat on the floor for an hour or two surrounded by GRE practice books and looked through them - maybe you should do that?
But I definitely recommend the Barons book.

 

[racccjlm]

I know princeton review has a book called 1,041 math problems or something like that. Basically its a book with over 1000 practice math problems that come in sections such as "algebra" "trig" "geometry" etc.. also, the math is pretty similar to SAT math, so if you have any of those books still lying around you can do those math problems as well

This. I found the 1,041 math problems very helpful.

 

[CalicoCate]

I used the Princeton Review book and their online tests as well as Kaplan and ETS. Of the three, I thought Kaplan was the most comparable to my actual score. When I took the Princeton Review tests, I was doing miserably on the verbal--only in the 400's. I got a 670 on the verbal when I took it for real. It wasn't much better for the math either. The ETS one was much closer for my verbal, but I scored 100 points lower on the math when I actually took the test. My Kaplan tests were usually within 30 points of what my score really was when I took it.