How to crack GRE, Revised Gre?

How to crack GRE?

GRE General is a test of basic skills - acquired over a period of time. A step-by-step approach is the best way to begin.

Step 1:

Understand the Structure and Requirements of GRE:

Verbal Reasoning - The skills measured in this section are, the student's ability to

• Analyze and evaluate written material, and synthesize information obtained from it
• Analyze the relationship between sentence components
• Recognize the relationship between words and concepts

Quantitative Reasoning - The skills measured include the test takers' ability to

• Understand basic concepts of arithmetic, algebra, geometry and data analysis
• Reason quantitatively
• Solve problems in a quantitative setting

Analytical Writing - The skills measured are the student's ability to

• Articulate complex ideas clearly and effectively
• Examine claims and accompanying evidence
• Support ideas with relevant reasons and examples
• Sustain a well-focused, coherent discussion
• Control the elements of standard written English

Step 2:

Analyze your Basics, Get a Diagnostic Test

Step 3:

Understand your Weaknesses and Strengths

Step 4:

Set Learning Goals to Maximize your Score

Step 5:

Schedule your GRE sufficiently far away to complete your learning goals.

Usually, 4-6 months is an ideal time frame for GRE preparation. For people with strong verbal and quantitative skills, 2-3 months may suffice. If you are particularly weak in both verbal and quants, take 8 months - 1 year. Depending on your learning efficiency and focus, this process will get you to an ideal point to start working on Score maximization.

Step 6:

Once the fundamentals are in place, focus on examination skills.

Practice is very important at this stage - as effective time management, shortcuts and tricks are crucial for GRE preparation.

At least 3 weeks of intense practice spanning several hours a day - with special attention to the areas where you are losing points - is the key to success.

Step 7:

Relax just before the Exam.

Stay at home and relax on the day before the exam and do not strain yourself. Calm down, collect your thoughts and proceed confidently to the exam.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Prerequisite

Know the revised pattern; number and type of questions in both verbal and quant section, time allotted for each section and set, breaks during the exam, scoring pattern etc. before reading this article. The required information is present here. Also, this article has been written specifically for verbal section.

Let's get started right away.

Clarifications

1. Although the scoring has been changed to be out of 170 for each section, you won't get your score out of 340 after you finish your exam. The exam will give you a range of marks had you given the old pattern. For instance, after you finish your exam, the screen will show something like this:

Verbal : 580 - 680

Quantitative : 750 - 800

The exact score along with percentile will be reported depending on the date you are giving your exam. Details are present over here.

2. Rumor has it that revised GRE has elements of sentence correction, grammar etc in its verbal section. If you have checked out the pattern, you would know that grammar is not required for verbal section.

3. As GRE people say, they have reduced the emphasis on pure vocabulary. This is true. However, it does not mean that you do not need vocabulary. Good GRE score still relies on a good vocabulary and doing wordlist is still a must.

Tips and Tricks

1. Give as many timed tests as possible. Do not get depressed if you are not able to write a good essay or not able to complete the verbal section for the first time. Take a test and contemplate on the shortcomings and do well on the next test.

2. Earlier, almost everyone used to do the vocabulary from Barron's. Barron's 19th edition (Barron's book for new GRE), unfortunately, didn't include any vocabulary. Get an older edition of Barron's (18th or less) and do the vocabulary. Doing the wordlists at least ONCE would help a lot.

3. Now GRE doesn't rely heavily on vocabulary. Therefore, from what I have noticed, out of the 3,500 words in Barron's wordlist, about 1000 words are the one which are heavily used and learning only those words immaculately can fetch you a very good score in sentence completion and sentence equivalence questions.

4. The frequently used 1000 words are the one which represent some emotion or property of something (adjectives). The prominent properties being : to criticize, deceive, being sad, talkative, stubborn, etc. Whenever you encounter words which mean the same or the opposite or related to the ones represented above, writing them down would be a good idea. Losing marks on these prominent words would be carelessness.

5. Try and give all the practice tests at the same time as your GRE paper. It has two benefits :

a) It will help maintain your schedule. This is specifically important for people giving the test in the morning. Also, as GRE exam is about 4 hours long, you will get to know your endurance level.  Giving the tests at the same time will make you more adapted for GRE to that part of the day.

b) You will get to know more words which are used heavily. Almost all the tests are full of words which are used extensively by GRE makers. Practicing more and more questions will also serve this purpose.

6. After giving some tests, I personally found that skipping over comprehensions initially helped a lot. Completing all the questions except comprehension in 11-12 minutes, doing comprehension questions in 15 minutes and keeping about 3-4 minutes for reviewing questions used to be my aim.