nitesh100 Posted May 22, 2013 Share Posted May 22, 2013 So I finally took the GRE yesterday and I’m still feeling light headed, thanks to my verbal score. While I was expecting to score in the 160s, a 167 was definitely a very pleasant surprise. Although I was very good in GRE Maths (I guess that goes for most engineers), GRE Verbal was really proving to be my nemesis. When I started my prep I was told by colleagues and experts alike to focus on vocab as the GRE vocab is really tough. Now I’ve always been good at mugging up so the first thing I did was cram the Barron’s word list. Took me about 2 months to mug up almost all of the near 3500 words, but mug them up I did! Given this background it came as quite a shock when I scored a paltry 150 in my first mock test (Powerprep 2). While RC was definitely a problem coz I’ve never really been in the habit of reading, it was surprising that I was also making mistakes in Text Completion questions, and not because I didn’t know the word meanings but because I couldn’t properly comprehend the meaning of the sentence itself, especially in those long 3-blank TC questions. This was sometime in the end of Jan, and I spent the next 2-3 months only focused on improving my comprehension skills. In addition to practicing RC passages, I also started doing a lot of general reading in terms of newspapers and magazines such as the Economist, the Hindu, etc. I strongly recommend that all of you who want to improve your verbal focus extensively on improving your comprehension skills. You will be surprised to see the impact this has on the so-called vocab questions (especially TC). Two books that I found very useful in my prep were the Manhattan 5 pound book and the Aristotle GRE Verbal Grail. The Verbal Grail probably has the best RC coverage of all the books out there in terms of both theory and practice passages. For vocab I really don’t recommend mugging up 3000-4000 words. The only place where vocab actually helped me was in the Sentence Equivalence questions but they come the least on the exam. It’s better to refer to a shorter list of high frequency words as available in the Manhattan or Aristotle books. For tests I used Manhattan and Powerprep 2 and found them very good. In fact my scores on the last 2 or 3 practice tests were pretty much in sync with my actual GRE score. Feels great to at least have one burden off my back. Now I’ll take the TOEFL next month and then start working on my SoP. Wish everyone on the forum luck with their prep! Cheers. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TradeTalisman Posted August 25, 2013 Share Posted August 25, 2013 Congrats on the aweesome score Nitesh!! Do you think shorter wordlists like Verbal grail/Manhattan ones would be enough to get 160 > on Verbal?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nick Posted September 20, 2013 Share Posted September 20, 2013 Congratulations on the great score nitesh. I'm doing vocabulary from the 45 day GRE Vocab book ? It has 1000 words and makes learning the words super easy. But is 1000 words enough ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nitesh100 Posted October 10, 2013 Author Share Posted October 10, 2013 Congratulations on the great score nitesh. I'm doing vocabulary from the 45 day GRE Vocab book ? It has 1000 words and makes learning the words super easy. But is 1000 words enough ? Yes 1000 words should be enough unless your vocabulary is very bad.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nick Posted October 17, 2013 Share Posted October 17, 2013 Yes 1000 words should be enough unless your vocabulary is very bad.. Alright..Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bullseye Posted November 13, 2013 Share Posted November 13, 2013 Congrats on the aweesome score Nitesh!! Do you think shorter wordlists like Verbal grail/Manhattan ones would be enough to get 160 > on Verbal?? I think in the current format of GRE, focusing on rc is very important. Without focusing on RC, getting 160 and above is quite difficult. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
harmeetw Posted January 17, 2014 Share Posted January 17, 2014 I think in the current format of GRE, focusing on rc is very important. Without focusing on RC, getting 160 and above is quite difficult. I concur. RC is incredibly important in the current GRE and is very difficult to improve within a short period of time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anupk Posted July 17, 2014 Share Posted July 17, 2014 I concur. RC is incredibly important in the current GRE and is very difficult to improve within a short period of time. I'd add my two cents. RC may look like difficult to crack but if you can identify the structure of the paragraphs , the various types of questions etc, it becomes much easier to handle RC questions Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bullseye Posted January 9, 2015 Share Posted January 9, 2015 I'd add my two cents. RC may look like difficult to crack but if you can identify the structure of the paragraphs , the various types of questions etc, it becomes much easier to handle RC questions Thank you very much. The tips from all of you really helped me to score 326 on the GRE. I'll post my story soon here Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aimhigh2016 Posted May 20, 2015 Share Posted May 20, 2015 So I finally took the GRE yesterday and I’m still feeling light headed, thanks to my verbal score. While I was expecting to score in the 160s, a 167 was definitely a very pleasant surprise. Although I was very good in GRE Maths (I guess that goes for most engineers), GRE Verbal was really proving to be my nemesis. When I started my prep I was told by colleagues and experts alike to focus on vocab as the GRE vocab is really tough. Now I’ve always been good at mugging up so the first thing I did was cram the Barron’s word list. Took me about 2 months to mug up almost all of the near 3500 words, but mug them up I did! Given this background it came as quite a shock when I scored a paltry 150 in my first mock test (Powerprep 2). While RC was definitely a problem coz I’ve never really been in the habit of reading, it was surprising that I was also making mistakes in Text Completion questions, and not because I didn’t know the word meanings but because I couldn’t properly comprehend the meaning of the sentence itself, especially in those long 3-blank TC questions. This was sometime in the end of Jan, and I spent the next 2-3 months only focused on improving my comprehension skills. In addition to practicing RC passages, I also started doing a lot of general reading in terms of newspapers and magazines such as the Economist, the Hindu, etc. I strongly recommend that all of you who want to improve your verbal focus extensively on improving your comprehension skills. You will be surprised to see the impact this has on the so-called vocab questions (especially TC). Two books that I found very useful in my prep were the Manhattan 5 pound book and the Aristotle GRE Verbal Grail. The Verbal Grail probably has the best RC coverage of all the books out there in terms of both theory and practice passages. For vocab I really don’t recommend mugging up 3000-4000 words. The only place where vocab actually helped me was in the Sentence Equivalence questions but they come the least on the exam. It’s better to refer to a shorter list of high frequency words as available in the Manhattan or Aristotle books. For tests I used Manhattan and Powerprep 2 and found them very good. In fact my scores on the last 2 or 3 practice tests were pretty much in sync with my actual GRE score. Feels great to at least have one burden off my back. Now I’ll take the TOEFL next month and then start working on my SoP. Wish everyone on the forum luck with their prep! Cheers. Aiming to take the GRE in another couple of weeks and your suggestions have been very useful. I have done gre verbal book once. Do you recommend that I should go through it again or not Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aimhigh2016 Posted November 11, 2015 Share Posted November 11, 2015 Aiming to take the GRE in another couple of weeks and your suggestions have been very useful. I have done gre verbal book once. Do you recommend that I should go through it again or not Didn't get any reply but doing the questions and areas again where i was facing difficulty was helpful..have been able to improve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nitesh100 Posted September 5, 2016 Author Share Posted September 5, 2016 Having been there and done that. I believe that there's no substitute for hardwork and smartwork. You should practice and relook at the kind of mistakes you are making. That's very helpful for improving your score Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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