Those who improved their GRE score after learning vocabulary, how many new words did you memorize (approximately)? I understand that the more the better, but I would like to see some numbers, please.
In my experience, memorizing is not the best use of your time. Spend your time doing practice tests, and sets of practice questions. Familiarizing yourself with the question types and the timing is the best way to prepare for test day. Test prep books can be helpful, but it's best to buy the book that ETS puts out- it is the most realistic as far as difficulty of questions. I prepared with Kaplan Premier, and I thought some of their strategies were helpful, but the practice tests were easier than the real thing.
I would say that you should read. Read as much as you can. I found that reading prepared me better than anything else did.
I went a little nuts and memorized all 500 vocab flashcards from Kaplan before my first GRE, it was definitely helpful but for my second time taking it I studied more strategies and methods rather than the words themselves and my score went from a 148 to a 159. I HIGHLY recommend Kaplan New GRE Premier...super helpful in helping me raise my verbal score and their practice test CD-rom is awesome and just like the real test. Good luck!
I agree with this. This might sound dumb, but I started reading articles in The Atlantic and The New York Times about a week before my test (if you have more than a week, definitely start earlier). This definitely helped me learn how to read a dense article and pull out main ideas, which is what a lot of the verbal section will test you on.
I did this, too. I memorized the 500 Kaplan words through a phone app I downloaded. Once again, I only had about a week to do this and if you have more time, learn all the definitions (even the obscure ones, if possible) of each word. Maybe it was just a coincidence, but a ton of those words showed up on my test and I was thankful I did it.
what was the app on your phone called that you used ?