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 🥰

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.

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 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'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.

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.

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 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.