General Admissions & OTCAS Verbal GRE Section

[Beachbum92]

I'm so fustrated right now i applied to stanbridge university- but in order for my application to be looked at, i need to have a 150 on the verbal section. I had a 145 and went up to 148. I just finished the exam and got a 149 :/ i'm not sure what else to do. I've spent money and a lot of time studying for this. I'm just so upset that i'm right at the edge and still fell short.

Idk whether to take it again. In all honestly, i've saved up enough to take it again, but in terms of what else i can do to study- i'm not sure. I've learned over 250 vocab words and have taken practice tests and used the site magoosh to help.

Does anyone have any other helpful tips for the verbal section?

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[occupational therapy]

I'm so fustrated right now i applied to stanbridge university- but in order for my application to be looked at, i need to have a 150 on the verbal section. I had a 145 and went up to 148. I just finished the exam and got a 149 :/ i'm not sure what else to do. I've spent money and a lot of time studying for this. I'm just so upset that i'm right at the edge and still fell short.

Idk whether to take it again. In all honestly, i've saved up enough to take it again, but in terms of what else i can do to study- i'm not sure. I've learned over 250 vocab words and have taken practice tests and used the site magoosh to help.

Does anyone have any other helpful tips for the verbal section?

Kaplan has some great review tests and review sections. If you go to a local library, you can check out any Kaplan GRE book, and inside one of the first pages is instructions on how to go online and "register" the book. If you do that, you can create an online account (all free) and gain access to Kaplan's review tests and sections. They helped me so much. You can choose to only study the verbal sections, or you can even take several full practice tests that they have.

I know you mentioned Magoosh, but Magoosh's vocab GRE app (if you have a smartphone) was the most helpful when it came to vocabulary on the GRE. The app includes several "decks" of cards, ranging from common to difficult. If you just set aside 20 minutes a day to study these words, you can get through several hundred words pretty quickly.

So, Kaplan and Magoosh is what I used, and they are both free.

Lastly, ETS provides either 2 or 3 full practice GRE tests, which definitely are worth doing, as they are probably the most accurate and true to the real test.

Good luck!

 

[HopingAndWaitingOT]

For credentials - I got a 168 V first time and am a former high school Social Studies/English teacher. Much of my time spent deconstructing state standardized tests and incorporating that into my classes really helped with the GRE, even though I'm 30 and haven't taken a full test like that since I was 18!

Since you've already focused so much on vocabulary and standard prep resources, I think one of your weaknesses may be grammar/sentence deconstruction. The GRE relies on complex and compound sentences stacked on top of each other - with the difficult vocabulary embedded. If the GRE prep materials at Magoosh and others didn't work as a refresher, you may need to take a half-step back.

If you can deconstruct a sentence into its individual chunks (dependent/independent clauses, subject/predicate) and identify parts of speech, their locations in sentence chunks and their primary jobs (really work on transition words and their jobs! knowing things like adverbs and how prepositions fit into phrases can help you cut out the "fat" of a sentence) -- the questions become a LOT easier.

Unfortunately, this stuff isn't a quick fix and has really fallen to the side in modern education. I learned stuff from resources like these to make my own materials.

Diagramming sentences
Diagramming sentences examples and backstory
Basic grammar
"Fun" interactive exercises
My favorite university resource