GRE Preparation Tips

My wife recently gave here GRE the biggest constraint was time as she got only 2 months to prepare nevertheless she scored pretty well 1400/1600(Quants 780 Verbal 620). Following is her experience.

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I had prepared for GRE in two months working 4 hours everyday and some extra hours on weekend. Remember no strategy is perfect, you need to read all of them but you should filter out the information given and utilize only that part that suits you as there is more than one way to reach the same destination.

SOME GENERAL POINTS


1 – Give the diagnostic test. Do not worry about how many formulas you remember or how many words you know. This test will be an eye opener as to how much is still left to be done.
2 – GRE quantitative is more logical than calculation based. Always keep this is mind even when you don’t remember the formula you can solve it by logic. For any exam you should prepare to that level of difficulty as is needed in the exam. Do not go overboard in any section. It is a natural tendency that one always wants to do what he is good at but remember in the GRE you cannot escape any section.

3 – I agree words need to be learnt but there are several ways to learn the words. Mugging up is one way but root words or relating one word to a group of words or through a sentence is also possible. You need patience and never give up.

4 – Analogy is very logic oriented. It is possible that you know the exact meaning of all the words in an analogy question yet you get a wrong answer. So the bottom line is, learn the art of building bridges and then solve. The words that you learn in vocabulary help you out in analogy but it is not a necessary and sufficient condition to get them right.

5 – Sentence completion is all about presence of mind. In Kaplan they have explained it very well. For example words like “although” reflect that an opposite meaning is being conveyed. Read the rules properly and follow them you will be able to get 9 out of 10 correct.

6 – Reading comprehension. The greatest difficulty is reading the passage on the screen and answering the questions on them one by one. Scrolling the passage up and down. I always found passages dealing with psychology, arts and history were difficult.


REMEMBER THESE POINTS WHILE PREPARING(this is what I followed)

Wordlist
I had only 2 months so I started off with the high frequency words of Barrons. These are the ones marked with a bold square in the word list. There is a small book of Kaplan with around 490 words. It is a very good book as it uses every word in a sentence and gives other synonyms of it as well. I made sure I learnt these words lists. I relied on two ways
A) I related one word that I learnt to a group of words that mean exactly the same or more or less the same EXAMPLE – fetid , noisome, malodorous, putrid all mean foul smelling. So whenever I revised the word fetid I tried to spell all the other 3 words as well.
B) I never tried to find out if it was a noun, verb or adjective form of the word but I always paid attention to the spelling of the words I learnt so that even when they are being used in other forms I recognize them
C) I religiously revised all the words. When I came across any new word I made sure that I wrote the meaning on the same printout pages on which I had my main word list or else I tend to write it in some corner and forget it all together.

Quantitative
As I have said earlier do not go overboard in mathematics. Use logic rather than calculation you will be able to solve it.

PRACTICE TEST WHILE YOU ARE PREPARING
This is the single most important part of the preparation. First give a test Second and more important analyze and make sure whatever went wrong in the last test should not go wrong in the next one.
e.g – all the analogy question you got wrong make sure you know the exact answers why it went wrong. If you put the following search in google you will find an answer “LACONIC : SPEECH ::” (use the inverted commas in search)mostly it will direct you to test magic to the exact thread in which someone has already asked the doubt. Take the pain and do it.
In quantitative you would be good at solving one type of problem but might lack in another topic
e.g – you can solve the number problems but you get the coordinate geometry or probability questions wrong. Make sure you improve upon them. Kaplan has a workbook on quantitative. Pick up the topic start solving.

Following are the tests I highly recommend.
VERBAL
Solve all the Bigbook tests the more you solve the more confident you will be .Trust me the test questions are almost the same. Always keep the time in perspective while taking a test. In the beginning you may cross it but do keep a time track and test without the time constraint is useless and not good. You are sure to panic in the main test. REVIEW EVERY TEST.

QUANTITATIVE
I would again say DO NOT GO OVERBOARD the GRE question pattern is very logical. Start off with Barrons. Solve the book and then take the Big Book tests you will be fine. Review the questions you get wrong and correct them. If this correction needs you to learn a formula do it. MAKE NOTES OF THE FORMULAE AND REVISE IT. Do not get boggled by the wordiness of the Data Interpretation questions. They are very simple.



Fiends I will write again in which I will give the links of the sites form where I downloaded the practice papers and more on preparation strategy.