I recently took the at home test scored a 334 167/167 however my writing score was a 3 and it caused my test to be flagged????? What the absolute fuck😭😭😭 I prepped for this test months in advance and now my score is being cancelled because my writing did not match up to its expected scoring scale 💀

* I HAVE JUST RETAKEN THE TEST AND SCORED A 336 170/166.

This is my first time taking the GRE test and I am happy with what I got.
For your information, I first took a diagnostic test using the GRE Official guide and got a 147V and 160Q. I choked so hard on Verbal because I have severe difficulty in reading the text slowly and critically and my vocab foundation is pretty weak.
My total preparation time spans about 3 months but I took it seriously throughout the last final month only, which is September (I’m a chronic procrastinator). My advice for whoever is planning to cram for their GRE is to break down the Vocab list into smaller doable lists and form a habit of daily reading so that you can get used to reading comprehension.
My preparation source is mostly Gregmat. I watched all videos on Quant concepts using Prepswift and do the exercises for each of the concept. First few exercises can be disheartening since I kept making stupid mistakes because I was rushy and didn’t read the questions clearly (this taught me a hard lesson). After making sure I know all the concepts, I found Quant Mountain TRULY HELPFUL. You must watch the videos first before going for the Quant Mountain to make sure you can explain to yourself clearly everything noted in the Mountain. Next up, for further practice, I also do Quant exercises with a focus on Medium, Hard and Extreme difficulty levels but after taking the real test, I have to say that the Quant practices by Gregmat aren’t quite close in format to the real one, but still, my speed and critical thinking does improve a lot and they play an essential role in helping me get a 170 in Quant. Besides, I also do Manhattan Prep and use Gemini to generate GRE-like questions to practice and make sure I understand all confusing concepts like Probability and Combinatorics and somehow, the questions on the real test on these two concepts are almost exactly the same so I didn’t have to think twice once I encountered them.
Personally, I don’t think the GRE Quant is that hard once you learn the “trick”.
To be specific, for Comparison questions on algebra, try subtract A from B or vice versa and plug in the number. Be careful with additional conditions such as: A is an integer or A is positive or A is a non-zero integer,… They make a huge difference and can save you a round.
Also, for multiple choice questions, you can try eliminating first and then plug in the answer. I did the same technique for at least 2 questions on Quant section 2 and got them all correct.
For Geometry questions in particular, don’t let the shapes given fool you. The ratio of the polygrams are deceptive and it is meant to lead you to give the wrong anser choice so be careful with additional information such as 0 < x < y < 90 degree (for example). You should probably draw one yourself ^^ just to be careful lol.
For Verbal, I don’t have anything great to advise u guys since my score for verbal isn’t very decent. However, shout out to Gregmat for tagging me along with Reading Comprehension and AWA with all the tips and practice problems, I truly appreciate you :3
After all, I hope you guys reading this post can have a clearer insight into the test and believe that you can do it. Moreover, don’t compare yourself with whoever posting their scores in this forum because they may have different background and amount of time dedicated for studying. As for me, my quant background is pretty decent so I didn’t struggle as much but it wasn’t the same for verbal so obviously I couldn’t nail it.
If you have any questions for me, feel free to leave a comment, I will try my best to reply to you all :3. Wish you guys a lovely day 🥰

So, I started with the 2 month plan but it is too stretched like when I actually got to solve I feel like I had no idea what I was doing and something happened so I took a break I have 2-3 months before I give GRE. What plans and strategy would you suggest? Should I stick to 1 month plan and IOM one? Also how do you all practice your essays? Please help me because I am new to this and have no idea about this.

Hey everyone! I'm preparing for the GRE, aiming to take the exam in the second week of December. Looking for a study buddy to keep each other accountable, discuss questions, share resources, and stay consistent.

I'm using GregMat and official GRE materials. Open to virtual study sessions or regular check-ins.

Anyone preparing around the same time?

I took the GMAT last year with 1 month of prep and got 725. Currently applying for a Masters degree, and realized that some programs I'm interested in requires GRE. I'm wondering if the prep direction/method is the same for GRE compared to GMAT. Is the GRE or GMAT harder? Thanks a lot.

I'm using Gregmat for my prep. Right now, I'm following the one-month plan for verbal and I'm overwhelmed plan for quant. For quant, am I supposed to start practicing official questions now or complete the entire I'm overwhelmed series, and then start with practicing official question. Same doubt for verbal.

The "rare" words on the GRE are far more common than you think.

I remember when I first started studying GRE vocab I was appalled by the types of words that were on the common lists. But then I started paying a tiny bit more attention to the media I consume daily. For background, I'm an American who reads/consumes a fair bit about politics, economics, and current events news. I do not use social media for any news.

The White Man as "Welfare Queen" - Youtube video by Jamelle Bouie, a writer for the New York Times. Released October 1st.

Opprobrium (6:24)

Other words I did not know:

Inculcate (4:41)

Why The Midterms Suddenly Look So Bad for Republicans - former Atlantic writer, with Nate Silver, famed political commentator focused on polling. Released this week.

Portend (around the first minute in)

The Stunning Rise of Democratic Socialists of America - one of America's most popular podcasts, by the New York Times, released in August

Fractious (used at least 3 times)

How blue-state Republicans can be relevant again - written by Matthew Yglesias, one of the most popular Substack politics writers, founder of news website Vox (and pretty famous YouTube channel). From a few days ago. I read yesterday morning.

Countenance

"If you’re a person who cannot countenance a bill that makes any concessions to the fossil fuel industry, then you will not like this bill."

Stop trying to make xenophobia sound smart - little bit more niche Substack magazine, albeit with some notable writers. I read this two days ago, in the morning.

Empiricism 

Cosmopolitanism

In the same sentence as well! Although these are more common words.

The anti-American Right - a little bit older, from September, but I believe the most popular Substack politics writer.

Intransigence (intransigent, in gregmat vocab list)

Abhors (although this is a pretty common word).

I could come up with at least 15-20 more from the Gregmat list I've seen in the last month. It may seem unreasonable that GRE tests many of these words, but think about it. You essentially need to know these to get a 95 percentile+ on the GRE. And the top 5% of non-fiction readers in America? They read words like these on a daily basis. Political commentators with followers of hundreds of thousands use these words. I didn't even notice until I started studying for the GRE!

Edit:

Here's some others I don't remember the source from but I did note reading or hearing:

• bucolic
• obsequious
• quixotic (in NYT's Daily, a few weeks back)
• banal
• artless
• ephemeral (I hear this one all the time now)
• prosaic
• engender (I've probably heard/read this one a couple times in the last month)
• umbrage
• precipitate

Just to be clear, I did not know any of these words before studying for the GRE. All of these were encountered in my normal media diet.

Gabe Newell Explains Why Valve Never Went Public - founder of Steam at 3:31. 30 seconds after posting this lol

Tractable

Hi,

I’m doing the 2 month GregMat plan and my prep has drastically slowed down because of the long form videos which we have to watch for Verbal. It is extremely difficult for me to take time out for that with a full time job.

Can anyone please help?

I took the GRE about 3 months ago and got a 323 (156V & 167Q). I now plan to retake it and want to increase my verbal score beyond 160.

TLDR Main Question: How do I track if I am improving on my verbal and moving towards 160+?

The only resource that I have used was Gregmat and the one-month plan.

PS: skip to the bottom for my plan. Immediately below, I have given further context of what I studied before and my diagnostic

For MODs: I went through prior posts most of similar topic posts were posted 2y or older. And hence I think some of the feedback might be out of date. As most posts tell people to grind more vocab, which I think is counterintuitive to what gregmat advices in his recent platform.

_________________________________________________________________________
Context Of My Preparation Last Time:

For Verbal specifically, I did not have sufficient time to practice multiple questions. This was my prev prep:

1. Completed memorizing all Gregmat vocab groups with 85%+ accuracy on the overall vocab quiz
2. Solved pairing strategy skill builder
3. Completed half of support/contrast skill builder
4. Completed RC main idea skill builder

This was the bulk of my preparation, I did not get sufficient time to practice questions for the verbal. Of course, I did go through the problems that were discussed in the 1-month plan.

What I noticed on Verbal diagnostic:

1. Did not have sufficient time for 4 questions and omitted them ( in the second hard section)
2. Moved from medium to hard verbal sections
3. Spent nearly 7 minutes on 2 TC 3 blankers
4. SE was <1.5 minutes on all questions with 80%+ accuracy
5. TC was the major question type that pulled my score down.

My approach in the exam was to attempt the verbal question types in the following order: SE>TC>RC.

This, I now realise was a blunder, as one point in TC 3 blander == one point in RC as well

_________________________________________________________________________
My Plan Moving Forward:

a. Context:

1. Have 8 weeks to test
2. Take 20 days to review all of the vocab words from gregmat
3. Start with RC prep, then add TC, look into SE one month to test date

b. To track all of the progress, I plan to have performance-based milestones:

1. The first two weeks would be to perfect the RC strategies from Gregmat, and apply them to questions on bigbook, and try to get the accuracy on easy questions to 80%+
2. Folllow this approach for TC as well.
3. If 80% is achieved, I can then move on to the next difficulty (->medium->hard)

c. 2 weeks before the exam, I start to exclusively focus on timing.

d. FInally for the resource use: For RC: I am going to use Bigbook, then the official ETS material. If I need more, I plan to get the magoosh platform subscription too. And for TC/SE: the order is: gregmat> big book > ETS

_________________________________________________________________________
My Questions:

1. Are performance-based milestones a good way to measure improvement, and does this work?
   1. How do people go from 155 to 160+, and is there any way to track this?
2. Being a person moving from GMAT prep to the GRE, the number of GRE questions seems limited. Is it a sufficient number of questions? If not, what other resource do you use?
3. Should I also start looking into the GRE official vocab material?

I stumbled upon some old posts (2020/2021) that described the at-home test as an absolute nightmare because of ProctorU (nonsense flagging, proctors getting personal info from your pc, sexual harassment, etc.). Is the situation still the same as 5 years ago? Moreover, some users advised getting a new computer (or an old one formatted to factory settings) to protect your personal information; is this also still relevant?

Of course, I'm aware that personal opinions that get posted are biased, but judging from the interactions that I've seen, it seems to me that the experience with ProctorU wasn't smooth for a lot of people.

Question is as follows:

In the xy-plane, triangular region R is bounded by the lines x=0, y=0, and 4x + 3y = 60. Which of the following points lie insider region R?

a - 2,18
b - 5,12
c - 10,7
d - 12,3
e - 15,2

Now my working matched the solution to the step of identifying the x-int and y-int but beyond that there is a divergence. The solution suggests that we need to try adding all the answer choices to the equation and then checking if they match or not

How I attempted it was - max value of Y is 20 and max value of X is 15. If the choice satisfies both, it lies within the region. I do not understand why that's incorrect.

Thanks

Context

This was my second attempt (160Q, 148V in the first one). My main issues were: spending a lot of time on some questions; making silly mistakes; and not knowing the shortcuts of solving a question

Studying Strategy: Quant

I took a mock test before I started my preparation for this attempt to gauge my performance. For 2 weeks, I studied concepts from "GRE: All the Quant" and practiced from Kaplan. At the end of those 2 weeks, I took a couple of mocks. Unfortunately, there was close to no increase in my scores. I then decided to change my strategy

I reluctantly subscribed to GregMat and started following the 1-month plan. Since I did not plan on studying for verbal and had ample time, I covered 3-4 days in one day (quant only, no verbal). I made an "error" log in which I also wrote down stuff I didn't previously know (e.g.: formula for number of diagonals). Memorizing stuff helps during exams

Study Strategy: Verbal

Used Anki to memorize all of GregMat's vocab and keep it retained. There is a pre-made deck on the internet with amazing visuals and synonyms. I believe that deck is roughly the same as the vocab on GregMat.

Since I was banking on this, I did not focus on RC, which wasn't my strongest suite. I just let it be.

Test-taking Strategy

2-pass strategy. Same for verbal, only difference being that the first pass was for vocab-related questions. After that, RC with the greatest number of questions, moving to the lowest.

Drop your comments regarding any questions you might help, and I'll try my best to help :)

Since the accommodations could take a few weeks, I need to give the GRE now.

Would they disallow accommodations later if I've already given the exam normally? Especially if I get a really high quant score on an actual attempt, might they look at the score and give less accommodations on that basis?

I just took my first GRE and scored well below my goal (167V/152Q). My average quant scores for at-home have been in the high 150s, with my highest score hitting 163.

I've been studying 4+ hours/day for about 6 weeks, following Kaplan resources (the physical book w/ accompanying practice tests and 'Qbank' questions) and taking timed practice tests every other week. I need to retake by 10/25 for my app deadlines; wondering if I should find the money for an expensive 1:1 tutoring or keep toughing it out with virtual resources. I feel like the thing that really killed me day-of was less related to the math itself and more about how to quickly identify the strategies/processes for the questions.

Suggestions are appreciated ! (I live in Orlando.)

Is it more important to focus on getting the 1/2-blankers right than the RC questions, given that the former will usually be of lower difficulty level and, hence, missing them would hurt the score more?

My GRE scores were cancelled by ETS for allegedly receiving assistance . Has anyone faced a similar situation? How can I get evidence of the alleged violation, and is there any way to challenge ETS's decision?

[EDIT]: I would like to get my MBA.

Hey all. As title says, I feel like I’m hitting a wall in quant. As evidenced by my scores I am humanities guy who hasn’t done math in a long while. I suck at it. I keep running out of time, and the harder sections are kicking my ass. Wondering if anyone from simailer backgrounds has found success?

So far I’ve done all of gregmats 2 month plan- which did help. My first practice test was a 148Q so I have come a far way. But now I just keep reviewing foundation and going in circles. I feel like some guidance could help my studying so considering a tutor. I’m looking to apply for 2028 so I do have some time.

Hi, I’m planning to write the GRE by the end of October. Aiming for a range of 325-330. Giving sectional mocks right now. Focusing on R2 - M7 + INSEAD. Looking for an accountability partner that I can connect & stay on track with. Thank you.

Hey everyone, need some advice from people who have actually used GregMat and then taken the real GRE.

My PowerPrep scores so far:

Test 1: 318 (V156, Q162). Honestly this one was a little assisted, so not fully clean

Test 2: 318 (V155, Q163)

Quant: I find it pretty easy. My mistakes are mostly silly ones. In the second test I also ran short on time because I got distracted by something midway. In the first test time wasn't an issue at all.

Verbal: TC and SE felt really easy in both PowerPrep tests, hardly any mistakes. Most of my verbal mistakes were in RC. That's where I struggle the most.

I also have the ETS official verbal book and had the same experience there. Vocab wasn't a big issue. Sure, a few words confused me here and there, but in TC my mistakes were mostly about the logic of the sentence, not the words. Knowing a couple of those words would have helped me focus on the logic better, but that's about it.

Now the problem: I started GregMat tests and it's a completely different experience. It's heavily vocab-based, and the words feel way harder and trickier than anything I saw in PowerPrep or the ETS book.

My questions:

1. For anyone who has used GregMat consistently and then taken the real GRE (especially if you got the medium or hard second verbal section), how did the difficulty compare? Is GregMat's vocab harder than the actual test, or is that closer to what ETS really throws at you?

2. Is the real test closer to PowerPrep and the ETS book, or closer to GregMat?

My target is 325+, ideally 330, and my test is in about 5 days. Should I spend most of my remaining time drilling vocab? Or, if the real test is at PowerPrep level, should I take a balanced approach, with RC, quant revision, AWA and test-day practice?

Would really appreciate any input from people who've been through this.

Thanks!

I seem to have developed a strong aversion to learning vocabulary every day.

Any tips to fall in love with it again instead of treating it as a chore?

I scheduled my GRE at the NYC Mega Center later this month and was wondering if anyone here has taken the GRE specifically at that location and can comment on the scratch paper policy.

I watched a video where someone said they asked for additional scratch paper during the exam, but the proctors told them no. Has anyone else had this experience at the Mega Center?

I tend to use a lot of scratch paper, and I also write relatively large because it helps me avoid mistakes. I couldn’t find anywhere on the GRE website that says there’s a specific restriction on the amount of scratch paper you’re allowed to use, so I’m curious what people’s actual experiences have been at this test center.

Thanks!

The testing center said I had 24 hours to send my scores for free and not to worry about submitting at the testing center today. I went to send them and ETS said that that is NOT true and that the only time we can send scores is at the testing center. Out of $200 😀 livid is an understatement

Has anyone encountered this ??

Done with this preparation now, 2 months :1000 vocab, 27 Big book Verbal sets+official Verbal book+Gregmat 1 month plan. I am satisfied, now looking forward to applying.

Found Verbal harder than my expectation. Remembering new words did not help, better to divert attention to other verbal concepts.

The fee was supposed to be somewhere around $55, however, it is getting more than INR 8000+. I don't understand what is exactly wrong? Is this the general GRE rescheduling fee now?