not sure

[Stressed]

Hello everyone,
I'm new to this forum, and so far have found a lot of posts very helpful!
I was wondering what you guys think of my situation:
I registered for the gre just a week ago and plan to take it in 3 weeks. So far I haven't been doing that great, I need to work on my vocab and well, pretty much on everything. I don't have school or work at the moment, so I plan to fully immerse myself into it for the next 3 weeks. If I don't do too well I was thinking about retaking it in September. After reading some posts here I see that people are putting at least 3-4 months into preparation. Is that combined with work, school, etc.? I really want to get a good score, is it even worth going to my June exam or should I reschedule?
On a different subject, how do you guys deal with pre-exam stress? It really throws me off sometimes, I find it hard to concentrate when I worry .
Thanks for any advice!

[cridamour]

As far as preparation time is concerned, everything depends on what your starting point is, and what you're aiming for. Some people already have a broad vocabulary from reading a lot, some have excellent math skills. If that is your case, you'll need to brush up on only a couple of things and on test-taking strategies rather than processing loads of vocab or math rules.

Take a test to see how well you could do without studying, and then see how far you're from your target score and which parts of the test you need to work on most. Make sure to work hard and take another full test after a week of studying to see how big your progress is. (and do this every week) I studied about a month for the GRE (while working fulltime) and got V640; Q680; AWA5.0, but I will retake the GRE for a better verbal score since that is the most important part for the programs I'm applying to.

[MsDemeanor]

I really can not advise you about how long to study. I did study over a summer and then took the GRE in the fall. But I was working, and traveling a lot so my study wasn't exactly that great.
If you can take the exam later, I would, I mean, with more time to prepare, your score will probably increase.

Pre exam jitters. I tried to make my studying a lot like the test centers (It helped because I had already had to take a board certification test in the same center... so I knew what to expect. But I would often take my GRE software to the schools computer lab, so I could practice with the noise of other people around me.

[simple2005]

I think the best way to know where one stands , is by doing the power prep and taking the as such with full sincerity, power prep is very close to actual test. All the Best

[babypurin]

As Cridamour said, you really need to find a target score, and base it off previous practice tests you have taken. Also, take into the fact, that if you are appyling to a school for a subject that requires a lot of math per se. You would probably want to make sure that your Quantitative is at or above the level you are going to need; if it isn't focus on that more than the verbal, due to the lack of time you possess.