Personally, I know that studying for the GRE can be demanding, exhausting, and confusing! I wanted to create this blog to give all students a chance to share their experiences with the GRE and give advise to other students who feel overwhelmed when deciding to take the GRE or go to grad school. Although everyone comes from different backgrounds and has had different experiences through college and grad school, most likely we can all agree that standardized testing SUCKS! Feel free to comment your experience with the GRE, advice you feel students who are preparing would benefit from, or questions you may have about what or how to study for a test in this type of format.
The first time I took the GRE, I barely studied and would just “look over” Princeton Review book. I did not score well the first time, due to limited amount of time studying. For my graduate program (speech pathology) each school had specific scores they wanted you to achieve on the GRE. After looking for study materials, I found Magoosh to be the most helpful. It was cheaper at the time when I used it (Summer 2018), however, my scores improved drastically from using this method. I studied for 3 months and my scores in the verbal section improved by 8 points and my math scores improved by 6 points. I know studying for the GRE can suck, but this…
HEADS UP: they no longer let u use a pencil and paper for scrap math problems u now have to use a white board and expo marker
To prepare for the GRE, I scheduled my test and started studying about 3 months in advance. My primary study resource was the Princeton Review’s “Cracking the GRE Premium” book. This was a great resource, because it had paper and online materials and several practice tests. I would definitely recommend it, and fortunately, unlike the GRE, it is not that expensive. The other resource I used was the Magoosh GRE Vocabulary app, which is free and very helpful. Good luck with your studying!
I found the best way to study for the GRE was through doing practice problems. I bought the Manhattan prep 5lb book of practice problems and went through every single one. If I did not understand the question or get the answer correct quickly, I then would go to verbal or math GRE prep books to review the concepts I didn't understand. I was able to raise my English score 4 points by doing this and math 10! Definitely worth trying :)
Personally, the best thing I’ve done is study vocab flash cards from Manhattan prep. They have 500 words that are considered essential and another 500 that are a considered more advanced and are more likely to come up on the harder version of the verbal reasoning section. I’ve also used the books as well. The books and flash cards are definitely expensive but from what I heard the practice tests and practice questions are a lot more true to the actual difficulty of the real exam than the ets practice books that are available. I’ve also used Princeton review self paced material which is online which has been extremely helpful for quantitive reasoning and provides videos that are on par…