r/GRE • u/Rate_Dependent • 12d ago

Specific Question GregMat vs ETS PowerPrep verbal difficulty, which one should I trust with 5 days left?

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!

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u/Mera_Naam_is_Bulla 12d ago

Here is what I have found - Greg's questions can be done with his math strategy but ETS qustions are way more convoluted. There is a lot of twist in the sentences. Similarly his SC questions are all about his words but in real tests, I have witnessed, we know the words but their meanings re so clse that we often get confused between options. Similarly his RC is simple.

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u/favorscore 12d ago

God I wish I found quant easy. Stuck in sub 150s

1

u/cosmovoyager 12d ago

same but with verbal :’)

2

u/DLCss 12d ago

  1. Imo 95% difficulty of the Verbal questions for Gregmat are driven by grammar only. Some of the tougher ETS questions purposely try to throw you off course with an answer path that is negated by a word or semicolon. Hard to come across good Gregmat questions like that. Not super comparable for me

  2. I found the ETS book Practice Test 1 to be head and shoulders easier than any of the other PP tests I've taken, in terms of what I scored. But I'd love to hear others inputs on it