how much time to prepare for GRE

[maple_leaf]

Hello all,
I was just wondering how much time you are putting in per day/ per week towards your preparation of GRE. I am going to take my GRE sometime at the end of September. I am spending like an hour or two per day studying for GRE. I know I should be studying more but I am working full time and after coming back home at the end of the day, I just want to sleep .

[Zonky]

I am glad you created this thread, I want to ask the exact same question. I heard something crazy like 12 hours everyday for 5 months... but i will not be able to put in that much because of other commitments... so can some one please help us?

[maple_leaf]

I have no life...I am at work, eating lunch on my desk and checking TM forums..yeh...How can someone study 12hours/ day for 5 months? I do not think I can do it even if I did not have this job.

[Smileysquared]

I would say 6-8 weeks would be sufficient. Practice is key.

[Jeanette]

I guess it depends on how important a high GRE score is for you, and how high you were scoring to begin with on practice tests. Personally I am taking the GRE on Monday, and I have been preparing for about 3 weeks, about 2-3 hours a day (but not every single day). I only found these boards a few days ago and they've helped me locate resources. My time went into reviewing the math (Barron's book), learning vocabulary (Barron's list, and also some lists I've found online), reading threads on this board and doing practice tests, such as 800score and big CD. So far my practice tests are in the 700 range which is good enough for me. Maybe with another 100 hours of practice I could get into the 800 range but it's just not worthwhile for me as my grad school plans won't change much if I get in the 700s or if I get perfect scores. Personally I think that anyone who is spending 40 hour weeks studying for the GRE has got their priorities out of order and they should be spending their time on more productive activities such as work or their actual courses.

However, I'm a native English speaker so I can understand that someone for whom English is not a first language will need a lot more time to catch up in vocab. etc. Personally if I had to take this test in Hindi or Japanese or French I'd fail for sure. I'm blown away by the people who manage to get perfect scores on a hard test that is not in their own language.

[maple_leaf]

I know that I can get 750-800 Q with a little bit of practice. But I am not a native English speaker. I can speak English fluently and my I have pretty good writing skills as well. However I think that the verbal sections of GRE are just brutal. I am just too overwhelmed.

[Bayern]

The thing is, whether the verbal score is important for the schools you are applying to. I have seen you posting your profile in the econ forum. If you are going econ, then you do not need to worry about doing well in the verbal portion, getting closest to 800 is the key. So, as you can see, the time required to prepare depends on person to person.

[Oink]

Well i worked for 3 weeks about 5-6 hours a day got the results

[maple_leaf]

Originally Posted by Bayern

T If you are going econ, then you do not need to worry about doing well in the verbal portion, getting closest to 800 is the key.

I know that the adcoms don't care much about the verbal portion ( when it comes to econ). But I have very little research experience, my undergrad college was not that good and my LORs are going to be from relatively unknown professors. So I feel that to make up for all those shortcomings, I should at least get a 1450+. I got only 1350 in my SATs. And GRE is way harder than SATs. I am just going to keep my fingers crossed and do my best. Thanks guys for all your advice and suggestions.

[maple_leaf]

Originally Posted by Oink

Well i worked for 3 weeks about 5-6 hours a day got the results

Hey Oink can I ask you how much you got in GRE ( of course if you don't mind me asking you). Thanks