Recently I took the GRE test scoring 325, 168 in quant and 157 in verbal. In this post, I write about my preparation and mistakes, hoping to give you helpful information and finally get a higher score than me. This post has three sections: 1. general information about GRE 2. my advice about quant section 3. my advice about verbal and writing section.

General information about GRE

As you know GRE test can enhance your application for graduate studies (especially for international students). Getting a high score in this test, increase your chance of getting admission. The test has three sections: 1. quantitative reasoning: if you have done your undergrad studies in STEM fields, don’t worry about this section, it is just basic math problem-solving. this section is important if you are applying for engineering or computer science programs 2. verbal reasoning: second important part of the test including reading comprehension and critical reasoning. this is the most difficult part for international students. 3. writing: the least important section of the test. You should write a logical text about a subject.

The GRE test has been changed since 20 Sep.(I think!!). The new test is shorter with fewer questions and has only one writing part. this can benefit you or damage your score. fewer questions mean that every question has more value and a mistake decreases your score more. However, the test became shorter and you do not get tired, especially near the end of the test. So, you should be focused, read carefully, and try not to make any mistakes, if you want a high score.

Quantitative reasoning

This part includes basic math problems from high school. However, you should be careful. There are a few hard questions or questions with traps. You should practice, solving questions. This would help you know the traps and avoid them. I think, in the new test, focusing on easy or medium questions with traps is more important than preparing for hard questions because the whole part has 27 questions and you probably will see 2 or 3 hard questions at most. This was one of my mistakes. I focused on practicing hard questions, while in the test I missed an easy question and I got a score of 168. Don’t forget to read the official ETS book first and then solve more questions from external resources.

Verbal reasoning

In this section, you will face text completion and reading comprehension questions. Most of international students whose first language is not English find this section difficult. First thing to do is to enhance your foundation: learning more GRE words and understanding the english grammar well. Do not see GRE as a test like TOEFL. You need to learn more than 2500 words for GRE and if you read 20 words every day, it would take you more than 4 months. So, start early, strengthen your english foundation. Then, you should read official books from ETS. After completely knowing the question types, I recommend you see Greg Mat’s tutorials on verbal. He talks about strategies that you can use to improve your performance. However, you should know that practice is very important to become professional in using these strategies. I personally think that in TC questions you should find the logical path behind the question to find the correct answer. So, think about knowing the mind of question maker and the designed path for reaching the answer. Do not spend too much time on TC questions because you will miss RC questions. Also, do not use your personal information or a combination of personal knowledge and facts in the reading to answer RC questions. This is one of the common traps in these questions.

The writing section in the new version of the test, only contains one part which is issue. You should write a meaningful logical text in a limited time. So, you can’t spend more than 3 or 4 minutes thinking about your reasons. First, you should make a template for yourself. this would make your mind ordered and you would not became confused during the test. After that you should practice in order to write without bold grammatical mistakes. This is very important. Do not focus on anything else until you make sure that you won’t make any bold grammatical mistakes. After that, you can concentrate on writing better logical reasons and more word numbers.