Studying for the GRE

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.

MJHUSKERS

Full Member
10+ Year Member
Joined
Apr 12, 2009
Messages
163
Reaction score
1
I'm curious how some of you guys studied for the verbal part of the GRE?

I've been increasing my vocabulary by 30-40 words per day with different GRE books/flash cards. I have also been trying to read more and more from newspapers and magazines like TIME and I will pick up a few new words from there.

Is it really worth the time? What are the chances the words will actually show up? Can anyone tribute their high score on the GRE from learning hundreds of "high frequency" words?

Members don't see this ad.
 
It may have improved my score a little but your time will be best spent going over quant. There are a plethora of different concepts they can ask you. You can get a very high score in quant. much more easier than verbal because of the curve they have for quant. If you can get 89% on quant that is a 770-790 depending on which difficulty of questions you got right. Just take the GRE powerprep tests and that is the same thing as the real shindig. Good luck.
 
I'm curious how some of you guys studied for the verbal part of the GRE?

I've been increasing my vocabulary by 30-40 words per day with different GRE books/flash cards. I have also been trying to read more and more from newspapers and magazines like TIME and I will pick up a few new words from there.

Is it really worth the time? What are the chances the words will actually show up? Can anyone tribute their high score on the GRE from learning hundreds of "high frequency" words?

MJHUSKERS, I got a 700 on the verbal and here's how I trained for it. BTW, I'm more of a math guy so I found the verbal section to be much harder.

I bought Barron's GRE book and studied all the high frequency words (I think the list is about 400 words). In my case, all the difficult vocab words I encountered on the GRE could be found on that list.

Secondly, I bought the ETS "big book" (it's an old book you can find it on amazon) which has about 50 old GRE tests. For two months, I took one verbal test a day to improve my timing. My personal weakness on the verbal section was the reading comprehension, and I was able to significantly improve this with my daily practice. The last two weeks before the test I used the ETS Power Prep software to get used to feel of taking the test on the computer.

Feel free to ask me more questions if you have them.
 
Members don't see this ad :)
Will,

Can you link me to the ETS "big book"? How many practice exams does it have?

I have the Kaplan 500 flash cards. I'm guessing their very similar Barron's vocab words.

How about math; how did you guys practice for that?
 
I started with the Barron's high frequency list but decided I didn't have enough time to make out all the flashcards for it so I bought Kaplan's 500 words. From the little I've done from each list, there are many overlapping words, so doing either should be fine for that.

Other than that I can't comment on much. I like the Barron's quant section but I have yet to take the test so I'm not sure how well it is actually helping. Plan on taking my first practice test at the end of August.

How long do you plan to study in total and when do you plan on taking it? I'm really just starting and plan on taking it at the end of September. I don't think that's really enough time for me but I'm hoping to crack 1000 with it.
 
Will,

Can you link me to the ETS "big book"? How many practice exams does it have?

I have the Kaplan 500 flash cards. I'm guessing their very similar Barron's vocab words.

How about math; how did you guys practice for that?

I did a search...looks like the ETS Big Book isn't currently being sold on amazon. I also searched ebay and couldn't find it.

However, this book is like a mini version of Big Book (I think it has ten or so tests)--I bought it and found it to be very useful.

http://www.amazon.com/GRE-Practicin...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1249573800&sr=8-1

If you can't get the books, I strongly advise you to get as many of those practice GRE CD-ROMs (Kaplan, Barrons, etc) as possible. Again, by taking tests on a daily basis, you will be able to identify any existing weak areas and, more importantly, you will learn how to think like the makers of the test.

As for the math, I have a solid background in mathematics but I did review the Barron's math section, which I found to be very complete. However, my math section on the GRE was quite different than anything I had expected--I was given a bunch of convoluted word problems, one of which actually resembled a physics problem from Newtonian mechanics.
 
Well, I just started studying for the GRE and I'm taking it this weekend. I haven't really studied much besides going over old math concepts. I have a decent range of vocabulary and although my study guide has tons of words to go over, I find myself just glancing over them. As alluded to before, the time to reward ratio isn't so great for verbal. You can study for weeks and not increase your score at all. On the other hand, you can study for math for a few days and increase your score quite a bit.
 
I studied for 3 months. To be COMPLETELY honest, when I took the GRE, it was like I was guessing everytime. I did not see any of the words I studied (I bought the 500 words book from Kaplan). I might as well not have studied. And worst of all, I kept running out of time in the 2 quatitaive sections they gave me so I started guessing both times.
 
Well, I just started studying for the GRE and I'm taking it this weekend. I haven't really studied much besides going over old math concepts. I have a decent range of vocabulary and although my study guide has tons of words to go over, I find myself just glancing over them. As alluded to before, the time to reward ratio isn't so great for verbal. You can study for weeks and not increase your score at all. On the other hand, you can study for math for a few days and increase your score quite a bit.

Muscles, I tend to disagree with your statement because I think most fail to put in the recommended three months of GRE preparation. Sure, if you study a few weeks for the verbal it might not show, but I'm confident that if you put in the proper time and effort your results will show for it. I did not put in the full three months, but I certainly came close by taking two and a half months of study prep. I felt the most significant results came during the last month of prep because it was then that I began to "hit my test taking stride." It really seems like a lot of people on this forum try to wing the GRE by studying for a few weeks (if that).
 
Muscles....you have more guts than me. I couldn't just show up and take the GRE without preparation. However, you could be one of those test takers who can just flat out take tests without a problem. Let us know how it goes.

jbizzle, that sucks. I've heard mixed results though. Some poeple have told me that actual words that they studied from Kaplan or Barron's have showed up on the real deal. It all relative to the test that you are given. What did you end up for a score Jbizzle?
 
I studied for 3 months. To be COMPLETELY honest, when I took the GRE, it was like I was guessing everytime. I did not see any of the words I studied (I bought the 500 words book from Kaplan). I might as well not have studied. And worst of all, I kept running out of time in the 2 quatitaive sections they gave me so I started guessing both times.

I hear this often. This is why I pushed verbal to the side and decided to focus on math. Like I said, I just started to really study this past week so most of my focus is on reviewing math concepts. I feel as though even if I spend hours memorizing tons of words, it won't help as much.

Muscles, I tend to disagree with your statement because I think most fail to put in the recommended three months of GRE preparation. Sure, if you study a few weeks for the verbal it might not show, but I'm confident that if you put in the proper time and effort your results will show for it. I did not put in the full three months, but I certainly came close by taking two and a half months of study prep. I felt the most significant results came during the last month of prep because it was then that I began to "hit my test taking stride." It really seems like a lot of people on this forum try to wing the GRE by studying for a few weeks (if that).

If I had the time, I would have studied at least three months in advance. Unfortunately, I have a lot of family issues to deal with in addition to working full time 45+ hours a week. I'm by no means trying to wing the GRE, but I'm doing what I can given my time frame.



Muscles....you have more guts than me. I couldn't just show up and take the GRE without preparation. However, you could be one of those test takers who can just flat out take tests without a problem. Let us know how it goes.

jbizzle, that sucks. I've heard mixed results though. Some poeple have told me that actual words that they studied from Kaplan or Barron's have showed up on the real deal. It all relative to the test that you are given. What did you end up for a score Jbizzle?

I'm about to take a practice test now as a matter of fact. I'm not exactly in the right state of mind since a lot of things have been going on lately, but I'm going to give it my best. We'll see how the real GRE goes this upcoming Sunday.
 
Goodluck man. That's got to be nerve racking whether you've studied for months or haven't studied at all. I'm not looking forward to walking in and taking it.
 
Goodluck man. That's got to be nerve racking whether you've studied for months or haven't studied at all. I'm not looking forward to walking in and taking it.

Thanks..I'll let everyone know how it goes. I took off work today to study quite a bit and I'll be doing the same tomorrow. My test is scheduled for 7am this sunday.
 
Muscles, I winged the GREs and briefly studied the math section a couple weeks in advance. Also, I only did the math section of the practice exam and somehow did well enough to get into PT school. Hopefully it will work out for you! Good luck to all of you who are taking the GRE soon!
 
Muscles, I winged the GREs and briefly studied the math section a couple weeks in advance. Also, I only did the math section of the practice exam and somehow did well enough to get into PT school. Hopefully it will work out for you! Good luck to all of you who are taking the GRE soon!

Good stuff. I've had a few friends who went into the GRE with absolutely no preparation whatsoever and they did pretty well. Although this doesn't work for everyone, I'm hoping luck will be on my side for once. I'm going to complete both the verbal and math section of a practice exam in a few minutes.

edit..well i just completed the practice test..didn't do the essays nor did i really focus on the verbal..i just focused on math. anyway, i got a 550 with about 18 mins. remaining so i went through it quick. hopefully i can bump this quant score up a bit on the real thing and do decent on the verbal.
 
Last edited:
Hey guys,

For reviewing math on the GRE, did all you use were the math review sections in Barrow's book or the math review by ETS?

Good luck on your test muscles.
 
What helped me improve my quantitive score significantly (I only had 1.5 months to study!), was the GRE Math Bible. To improve my vocab, I bought the Kaplan 500 flash cards, which I used over the course of 6 months. However, what improved my practice scores the most was www.verbalearn.com (it's free and I found it much more useful than the flash cards!!): my vocab was dismal. Then the last few days, I focused on taking practice tests to get used to the online format. I significantly improved on the quantitative in a few weeks time, by 250 points! However, while my verbal scores improved significantly via practice tests, when push came to shove, I froze on the verbal and did worse than any practice test I took while prepping. To improve your score if you just have a few weeks (or days!), focus on the quantitative! Just my opinion...
 
Thanks for all the advice..Hopefully it can assist others as well. I'm off to take the GRE. Hoping it goes well.
 
My score stayed about the same and i studied all the words on the Kaplan vocabulary cards. It helped on about 4-5 probelms on the test but I still got about the same thing. My math score went from 400 to 750 after the class. What helped me was staring at the practice math questions until i figured out exactly what rule or trick they were testing for. Almost always it was a positive/negative trick, then exponent rules, then triangle rules, turning word problems into equations, those were the biggie question areas. Once I got better at this the tricks were easier to identify and helped to suggest what to do and save time. Good luck!
 
Top