Some people don't believe in usefulness of studying for any standardized tests. My experience has been completely opposite. I first took GRE without a day of preparation a year after graduating from university. I didn't really need to score high and thought since I had good grades in school, GRE wouldn't be that tough. I was wrong and did pretty bad. Five years later I got serious about the grad school, decided to apply to a prestigious university and had to get a very high score on GRE. It took me about 4 months to prepare to the level where I was comfortable. I could have probably used few more weeks, but was getting so tired of studying that decided to go for it.
English has been my weaker point, so I spent the most time working on that part: first increasing my vocabulary and then practicing verbal questions as much as I could. Since I was pretty comfortable with math, I left it for the last month of my preparation and mainly concentrated on getting timing right. Here is the list of the materials that I used to study. Hopefully some of this might be useful for the future test takers.
1. Word Smart for the GRE (Smart Guides)
There are about 600 words in this little book. It's not perfect, examples are a little "cheesy" and there is no pronunciation guide. Yet, I think this book really helped me. At first I tried to use flashcard software on my pocket pc to help me memorize new words, but for some reasons that didn't work well and I felt that I could remember more words using just good ol' paper flash cards. I am not sure, maybe it's the process of writing the word down, but somehow I felt I could remember more words that way. There are also little quizzes after every 5-15 words to help with learning. I think one could probably memorize about 80 words a week, though I averaged about 40-50. Obviously this is not the best method of acquiring new words, yet it did work for me. Several of them came up on GRE and quite a few I still remember.
2. The Wizard of Oz Vocabulary Builder by Mark Philips
This a pretty cool book, it introduces "GRE and SAT type" words in the context of a story to ease memorization. I didn't find it as useful as the Word Smart book, yet it was a nice change from just memorizing disconnected words. Every new "big" word is explained on the same page, with more examples to make it easier to remember words. Overall it was a pretty good, though a somewhat slower way of increasing vocabulary for GRE.
3. Kaplan GRE Exam Verbal Workbook
This book has strategies and tips for verbal section and the most important a lot of test questions. It helped me a lot with reading comprehension part and just getting over my "fear" of verbal section.
4.Barron's How to Prepare for the GRE Test I think out of all GRE preparation books, this one is the most useful. It has pretty good math review and its test questions are probably the closest to the GRE difficulty level maybe even a little harder. Barron also has a book "Pass Key to the GRE Test", which is basically a smaller version of this book. I've also noticed that they reuse a lot of questions from previous editions, so if you're on the budget you don't have to buy the latest edition. An older version will be just as good and the newest edition will repeat many questions anyway.
5. GRE: Practicing to Take the General Test, by ETS This book is published by the same guys that make the test. The review section is not that good, you'll probably be better off with Barron or Kaplan for that. However, tests are real GRE questions that were used about 10 years ago. The test has definitely increased in difficulty since then. I was somewhat disappointed with this book, yet I think 1 or 2 questions (or very similar) from the verbal section appeared on the actual test that I took. ETS definitely recycles questions, so it can be helpful to go through this book, but keep in mind that the real test will be much harder, especially the math section.
6. POWERPREP by ETS This is a software you can download from ETS website or you will get it in the mail after you register for the test. Don't wait though for the "mail version", mine came after I've already taken the test. This is the closest you will get to the real test questions; however again I thought questions on the real test were harder. Yet it is very helpful to measure your progress using this software. I took the first test after about two weeks of studying to establish a baseline and then the second one about 2-3 weeks before the test to see where I was and find any weak spots. My actual test results were almost identical to the results on my second Powerprep test.
Few suggestions:
1. Work on your weakest parts first. If it's vocabulary start your preparation with memorizing words and then move on to the areas that you are more comfortable with.
2. Establish your baseline score by taking one of the Powerprep tests early on.
3. You don't have to spend a fortune on study material, last year editions are just as good.
4. Test has become harder over the past few years, so don't get over confident if you do really well on the "retired" ETS tests. The level of difficulty is much higher now.
English has been my weaker point, so I spent the most time working on that part: first increasing my vocabulary and then practicing verbal questions as much as I could. Since I was pretty comfortable with math, I left it for the last month of my preparation and mainly concentrated on getting timing right. Here is the list of the materials that I used to study. Hopefully some of this might be useful for the future test takers.
1. Word Smart for the GRE (Smart Guides)
There are about 600 words in this little book. It's not perfect, examples are a little "cheesy" and there is no pronunciation guide. Yet, I think this book really helped me. At first I tried to use flashcard software on my pocket pc to help me memorize new words, but for some reasons that didn't work well and I felt that I could remember more words using just good ol' paper flash cards. I am not sure, maybe it's the process of writing the word down, but somehow I felt I could remember more words that way. There are also little quizzes after every 5-15 words to help with learning. I think one could probably memorize about 80 words a week, though I averaged about 40-50. Obviously this is not the best method of acquiring new words, yet it did work for me. Several of them came up on GRE and quite a few I still remember.
2. The Wizard of Oz Vocabulary Builder by Mark Philips
This a pretty cool book, it introduces "GRE and SAT type" words in the context of a story to ease memorization. I didn't find it as useful as the Word Smart book, yet it was a nice change from just memorizing disconnected words. Every new "big" word is explained on the same page, with more examples to make it easier to remember words. Overall it was a pretty good, though a somewhat slower way of increasing vocabulary for GRE.
3. Kaplan GRE Exam Verbal Workbook
This book has strategies and tips for verbal section and the most important a lot of test questions. It helped me a lot with reading comprehension part and just getting over my "fear" of verbal section.
4.Barron's How to Prepare for the GRE Test I think out of all GRE preparation books, this one is the most useful. It has pretty good math review and its test questions are probably the closest to the GRE difficulty level maybe even a little harder. Barron also has a book "Pass Key to the GRE Test", which is basically a smaller version of this book. I've also noticed that they reuse a lot of questions from previous editions, so if you're on the budget you don't have to buy the latest edition. An older version will be just as good and the newest edition will repeat many questions anyway.
5. GRE: Practicing to Take the General Test, by ETS This book is published by the same guys that make the test. The review section is not that good, you'll probably be better off with Barron or Kaplan for that. However, tests are real GRE questions that were used about 10 years ago. The test has definitely increased in difficulty since then. I was somewhat disappointed with this book, yet I think 1 or 2 questions (or very similar) from the verbal section appeared on the actual test that I took. ETS definitely recycles questions, so it can be helpful to go through this book, but keep in mind that the real test will be much harder, especially the math section.
6. POWERPREP by ETS This is a software you can download from ETS website or you will get it in the mail after you register for the test. Don't wait though for the "mail version", mine came after I've already taken the test. This is the closest you will get to the real test questions; however again I thought questions on the real test were harder. Yet it is very helpful to measure your progress using this software. I took the first test after about two weeks of studying to establish a baseline and then the second one about 2-3 weeks before the test to see where I was and find any weak spots. My actual test results were almost identical to the results on my second Powerprep test.
Few suggestions:
1. Work on your weakest parts first. If it's vocabulary start your preparation with memorizing words and then move on to the areas that you are more comfortable with.
2. Establish your baseline score by taking one of the Powerprep tests early on.
3. You don't have to spend a fortune on study material, last year editions are just as good.
4. Test has become harder over the past few years, so don't get over confident if you do really well on the "retired" ETS tests. The level of difficulty is much higher now.
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