STYLETHREAD -- LET'S TALK SHOP!

Sevilla · BCBG

Who has taken the GRE?

littlebean · Kate Spade

I used this book and so did all of my friends:

We LOVED it and all of us ended up getting very high scores as a consequence of its great help. If you're not opposed to getting another book, I would really recommend it. It doesn't have all the frills of a Kaplan or Princeton Review book, but it has all that I needed.

For verbal: I would recommend using Barron's list of most popular words (~200 of them) and making flash cards for them. Work through 5 at a time (take them with you everywhere so you can do them when you're waiting in line, sitting on a subway, etc.) and then once you've got them down, move onto the next set. If you learn all of those most popular words, I think you're well on your way to a high score. Many of those words showed up on my GRE.

For math: Work your way through the review sections. I did one section a week.

Generally, it seems like just reviewing math and memorizing words is the best thing, and then once you've got that done, you should take as many practice tests as possible. Don't forget while you're taking the test that if it gets really hard, that's a good sign since the computer adapts the hard-ness according to your previous answers. I almost cancelled my score because I was so afraid that I had done poorly because it seemed so hard, but that would have been a big mistake.

Hope that helps!

jrhampt · Kenneth Cole

I have taken the GRE, and I actually taught it for Kaplan a couple of years back. I recommend starting out by taking a full-length "diagnostic" test -- after you've taken one and looked at your scores, you should get a better idea of what you need the most work on. Also, it's much, much easier to raise your math scores (since they test a few limited concepts) than your verbal scores, so if you're pressed for time, concentrate on the math for a quick boost to your scores. After you've studied for a couple of weeks, I'd take another practice test to gauge your progress, and then repeat again in another couple of weeks. Ideally, you'd take 3 full-length practice tests: 1 before you start studying, 1 half-way through, and 1 toward the end.

relrel · Marc Jacobs

jrhampt wrote:
I have taken the GRE, and I actually taught it for Kaplan a couple of years back. I recommend starting out by taking a full-length "diagnostic" test -- after you've taken one and looked at your scores, you should get a better idea of what you need the most work on. Also, it's much, much easier to raise your math scores (since they test a few limited concepts) than your verbal scores, so if you're pressed for time, concentrate on the math for a quick boost to your scores. After you've studied for a couple of weeks, I'd take another practice test to gauge your progress, and then repeat again in another couple of weeks. Ideally, you'd take 3 full-length practice tests: 1 before you start studying, 1 half-way through, and 1 toward the end.

I totally agree with all of this. It's a waste of time to split your studying evenly between math and vocab if you are better at one then the other- however...don't ignore your better subject! I would also recommend putting a lot of time into the essay section as well. It's a pain in the ass to write essays out over and over but depending on what sort of career/major you are looking at for school this could be very important. Also, for the vocab section you should study roots of words as well as whole words. This way you have a better chance at guessing then if you were just blindly picking one word or the other. And believe me...you will have to just guess on more than question! Hope that helps! Good luck!