My GRE experience

Applying to graduate schools is a daunting task. Not only are you planning to sell your soul to the devil for two years (according to multiple sub Reddits), you are also committing to an extremely rigorous application process. Now, while each facet of the application is equally important for an admit, arguably one of the most apparent roadblocks amongst these are the required standardised tests. Usually, most graduate programs across the globe require some standardised test scores. Since I plan to apply to schools in North America, for me these were the IELTS and the GRE.

Having studied English for almost my entire life, the IELTS was a walk in the park; the GRE? Not so much. Now admittedly since I am from an engineering background, I did not find the quantitive part of the test difficult per-say. However, I did have problems getting past the 165 mark in the beginning. Perhaps due to the nature of the test.

In this article, I’ll go over the steps that I followed in order to achieve my score of 330 (162 V + 168 Q) with 4.5 in the analytical writing section.

General Overview

The graduate record examinations or the GRE is the most common standardised test that is a requirement for admissions in most non-business graduate programs. The test is typically 3.5 to 4.5 hours long depending upon your speed and constitutes six sections. The first section is analytical writing, it has two parts to it. Usually, in the first part the test taker elaborates their stance pertaining to a presented opinion. In the second task, the strength of a given line of argument is usually evaluated and points that could be stated to strengthen it further are mentioned.

The next five sections are sort of a gamble. Depending upon your luck or personal opinion you either get 3 math/ quantitative and 2 verbal sections or get stuck with 3 verbal and 2 math/ quantitive sections. The extra third section, whether its verbal or quantitive, is experimental and your score there is not counted in the final result. The bad news here is that there is no way to tell which of the sections is the experimental one.

How should one go about it?

Practice, practice, and more practice. During my 5 month long preparation, I gave countless practice tests, solved tons of question banks and attended many live question solving sessions. The key is to get used to the format of the test and train your brain to sit through a 4.5 hour fiasco without completely shutting down. This is because the concepts tested in both the verbal and quantitive sections are quite basic. The ETS guys don’t really want to test you on the expanse of your vocabulary or advanced algebra. They instead want to see how efficiently you apply basic concepts to solve seemingly impossible questions. That being said, having a basic and reasonably sized GRE vocabulary and the knowledge of some sneaky math tricks do help and save a ton of time. So where does this leave one?

I personally started by taking in person classes from a renowned freelancer based in India ( Write to me at harshitaachadha@gmail.com for details). However I soon realised that taking the classic “Indian approach” to this might not be a great idea. So I spent the better part of a weekend looking for online resources and found a ton of helpful material (mostly free but some paid resources as well).

Magoosh is an online platform that provides GRE self paced courses. They have a lot of helpful topic relevant videos but the most useful part of their platform is the math question bank. Its computer based, timed and overall a lot similar to the actual test format. Their plans, however, are towards the costlier side. If you’re looking to get your hands on the topic explanation videos but do not really want to subscribe, I’ve got you covered. I’ll link a folder below that houses the relevant resources. The said folder also has a ton of other useful material such as book pdfs, practice tests, etc.

Another online resource that turned out to be a life saver was gregmat’s material. I stumbled across Greg and his website while scouring through reddit and it was honestly the best thing that has happened to me all year. Greg has a ton of free online material both on his website and his YouTube channel. There’s tons of other useful material available with his premium subscription and before you guys run for the hills, its extremely affordable at only $5 a month.

Another YouTube channel worth looking at is the tested tutor. The channel covers tons of tricky math topics and the verbal content is also quite great. Lastly and quite randomly, I stumbled across this Chinese website that, from what I could understand, is their version of reddit/ quora. In one of the forums, people post reading comprehension passages along with the answers and this can be a good practice for those of you looking for a hike in the verbal scores.

Specific Tips

• For analytical writing, I utilised the prompts in the practice tests that I gave. To get an idea about the structuring and the tentative components of the SA, I would recommend that you refer to gregmat’s video + the tested tutor’s video on this topic. Apart from that the only advice I can give is not neglecting this section. Its the first thing that you see and if it doesn’t go well on the test day, it may end up setting a grim tone for the rest of the sections. Also, the more used to it you are, the lesser would be the brain power it consumes on the test day.
• For the quantitive section, you should have timed practice sessions. A gregmat subscription gives you access to a math question bank with difficulty labels. If you have access, then start with the easy ones and time yourself. If you do not have this subscription and prefer referring to books instead, then also time yourself. It’s the way to go. Some of the topics that are the toughest and needed most reviewing on my part were Venn diagrams, work rates, and probability combinatronics mixed problems. I referred to the tested tutor's YouTube videos for these.
• For the verbal section, in sentence completion question more important than knowing the words is discerning the context in which the blank is presented. With practice you realise that more often than not, the answers end up being simple everyday words that we overlook because we fail to recognise the context. In the multiple word selection questions, very frequently the options given are presented in pairs (this happens quite often although not every time). If you are able to recognise the synonym pairs, the question becomes a cakewalk. Two words wouldn’t match at all and out of the other two pairs left, one would be totally tone deaf leaving the correct option exposed. This technique is explained in detail on gregmat’s YouTube channel in case my rendition was messed up. In the reading comprehension questions, the task is to extract the relevant information from the passage. You have to tear away the jargon to get to the main point. Again, I referred to gregmat’s video for better strategies.
• Finally, for the vocabulary part, I think I memorised maybe 200 words specifically for the GRE. I am a firm believer in the fact that more important than mugging up words is to understand the question. However, I did have a vocabulary list and I’ll link that below along with the rest of the resources that I’ve mentioned.

And that’s about it. If you found this blog post all over the pace, I apologise. I might still be quite close to the catastrophe to report on it objectively. Finally, I would like to remind you all that every person is unique with different strengths and weaknesses. This was my experience and you do not have to do everything I did to achieve your dream score. The only important thing is to find your pace and have fun!

External Links - Magoosh, G Drive Resources, gregmat’s website, gregmat’s YouTube Chanel, The Tested Tutor’s YouTube Channel , The Chinese Website, and My Vocab List