anupk

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

Hey dude, I've kinda answered your similar question in another thread ..Do check it out :)

Hey man, These schools will look for excellent undegrad academic record and a top ranked undergrad school. Apart from this, they will look at your interest in the field which will be usually displayed through the research work that you have done in that area. If you are an engineer an IEEE publication will give a shot in the arm for your application

That's great new harmeet. All these schools are wonderful. I couldn't get accepted into any school this year. Had applied to Stanford and Berkeley this year but got dinged inspite of a great GRE score. Didn't get time to apply to more schools. Will apply in the coming admission season.

Hey, I've no idea about where to get the books from in Bangladesh. May you can check the aristotle site and see if they ship to bangladesh

Yeah, barron's is good but it's too exhaustive and basically you have to memorize everything. I had used the 45 day GRE vocab book and quite liked solving the crosswords and learning vocab through other means.

Congrats harmeet for the great score. You are just 1 point above the magical 330 mark so now you're all set for your target schools! :)

Princeton review books and for that matter Kaplan books are designed to cater to those targeting average scores. Remember that not everyone wants great scores or has the capacity/ability to score 330+ scores so they have to cater to the segment which should be fine getting a 310-315 on the GRE.

If I were you, I'd do both the parts-vocab and RC simultaneously. Learning vocab is a continuous process so you should starting doing that from day 1 of your GRE prep

I have been getting a lot of PMs since I posted my GRE debrief(scored a 334 overall V-165,Q-169). I'm sorry that i can't respond to each of them because it is too time consuming. However, since most of the queries are centered around how to score high on GRE Verbal, I thought that I would give a few tips here on how to score well on GRE Verbal. Before I start, let me tell you that it’s very difficult, if not impossible, to improve "drastically" within 2 months. Improving from a low score to a very high score within 2-3 months is difficult if not impossible.. It requires much more time ,energy and dedication. Here are some reasonable targets On diagnostic What you can expect on actual GRE 145 155 150 160 155 165 You should start by forming a strategy for yourself and taking a pledge that you will do everything possible to achiever your target score on verbal and also take a pledge that you will try your best to not stop following the schedule for yourself,something that we often end up doing.ADMIN EDIT: PLEASE UPLOAD YOUR IMAGE USING THE UPLOADER Number of days to dedicate on verbal per week to ace the GRE-5 days Number of hours per day - 3 hours on the weekdays and 5 hours on the weekends. These hours include reading newspaper articles etc. Basically everything that you will be doing to score well on verbal Here's 1. Start reading the editor's page in the newspaper: Reading long articles from a variety of topics is really helpful on the GRE. It helps build your vocab and improves your mental stamina to read long RC passages​ 2.Personal pocket dictionary- Often it happens that we come across a word somewhere-newspaper, magazine etc-and we check its meaning but we forget the word itself very quickly. Maintaining a personal dictionary really helps or if you have a smartphone, type down the new words in a file and keep adding the words there ​3. Books a)GRE Verbal Grail- The best book for GRE verbal How to use the book ? a)Before practicing questions, make sure that you go through the strategies in the book. For RC, there's quite a bit of theory and lot of strategies and you might feel like skipping it but trust me it will help you a lot. Do go through the theory before you practice. b) When you practice questions, do not go for an overkill and do many questions at a time. Try doing only 15-20 questions at a go and do a rigorous analysis of the questions. Basically from each question you should learn something new- why you got an answer right, why you got an answer wrong. c) Develop a thought process. Your focus should not be on doing a lot of practice questions in verbal. Your focus should be on developing a thought process. For example, after doing 10 passages from the book, I would ask myself, what is the common thing i have observed in the wrong answers in primary purpose type of questions.. Doing this will really help you. b) Word Power Made Easy – Great book to learn vocabulary How to use the book ? a)Target spending 30 minutes per day doing vocabulary from this book. b)Make sure that you revise the words that you have done; otherwise you will end up forgetting a lot of them. 4. Form a GRE study group: ​Last but not the least,form a study group to discuss new words. Remember the more you pronounce words, the more likely you will remember their meaning. To be honest, you will hardly use the GRE vocab in your daily life, so forming a study group with others will give an impetus to your prep and keep you on the track I know doing all this looks hard, but then it's the people who do all this, go the extra mile, who get those high scores. Hope the plan was helpful. P.S.- Please do not PM me with your individual queries. If you have any queries, please post on this thread only so that others can help you as well.

This is not the right thread to ask a specific question. You should post the question in the GRE Verbal forums

Congrats nitesh on the great score. As you would know I am also done with my GRE. Would love to connect with you. Have sent you a PM

True that. It's good for getting you off the ground but not good enough to help you move to high score.

I don't think that you need to practice very difficult passages..if you are comfortable with the economist and NYT articles, then you might want to focus more on doing GRE type of passages so practice as many passages as you can but make sure that you ANALYZE them..That's the key to improvement.

Sorry to hear about your bad GRE score. I bought the GRE verbal grail from ebay india because it wasn't available on flipkart. Received it in 3 days..

Thank you guys!

I'm done with the GRE and scored a 334 overall(Q-169,V-165) My target was to score 330+ and hell yeah I'm happy! I'm targeting all the top schools for computer science on the west coast- CalTech, Stanford,UCLA,UC Berkley,USC . Although there are a couple of top computer science schools on the east coast but i want to study in and around the silicon valley where all the action in computer science is so that's why west coast schools are my priority! How I went about my preparation Since I'm studying in a top enginering school in India,GRE Math seemed liked a cakewalk and frankly speaking,I didn't study for it much I just brushed up my basics but did a lot of practice. GRE Math: The GRE Math questions are from high school. The difficult ones are a bit tricky but if you get familiar with the types of questions that are tested,you shouldn't have much difficulty. GRE Verbal: GRE Verbal was a tough nut to crack though. I've not been into the habit of reading much and had to practice a lot from different books. I primarily used 3 sources- Princetons' Crack the GRE, GRE Official Guide and GRE Verbal Grail. Here's what I think about these books Princeton's Crack the GRE book- The book is good for basics and for giving you an overview but not much beyond that. I guess it's written for people who are looking at average scores otherwise it's of not much help. So for my verbal prep, I primarily relied on the ETS Official Guide and GRE Verbal Grail. ETS OG- The good thing about the official guide is that the verbal questions in it are quite tricky especially the text completion ones. The bad thing is that there aren't many practice questions. GRE Verbal Grail- Probably the best book for verbal. I especially liked its reading comprehension section as each question type has been dealt quite well and given that around half of the questions on the GRE Verbal are RC questions, you should really be able to nail the questions. The book provides a lot of practice questions too. Vocabulary: I kept on working on my vocabulary and would daily learn around 10 new words. What I didn't do is start practicing TC and SE questions alongwith learning vocabulary. I firstly wanted to be good enough at vocab before attempting these questions. Once I had some confidence in vocab, then I started attempting questions from the ETS OG and GRE Verbal Grail book. I'd do a block of 20 questions from the books,then analyze them and then write down the new words that I learnt. This really helped me master vocab to a great extent. GRE Test day: The actual test was not very much different from the ETS OG practice tests.Both the verbal and the quant sections were quite close and I think that doing quite a few practice tests actually made me quite comfortable on the GRE day. My advice to the fellow GRE aspirants: 1. Learning vocabulary becomes an interesting process if you use the words in your daily life. The more you use the words the better you will be able to understand the context 2. Learning the strategies for various RC questions is very important. If you don't know the strategies, you may end up taking more time than required on a question 3. It's all about practice. I think that GRE is quite an interesting exam and can be cracked if you practice well. That is really the key to success 4. Analyze your practice tests really well. There's no point in taking the tests if you are not analyzing them properly. Lastly, if I can get a good score , i see no reason why you guys can't. A good GRE score comes with hardwork but is something you can definitely achieve if you prepare well.

Did you try the ETS Powerprep tests? I found them to be the closest to what I saw on the GRE

I think if you are stuck at a particular score inspite of understanding the concepts, then you are not giving enough time to analyze the questions that you got wrong. I have done this meticulously and have been able to improve my score. Hopefully it reflects in my score :)

I think whether it is good or bad, but the official guide to the GRE is a must-have! Simply because it has been written by people who write the test. I found it's verbal part to be good though the quant isn't that good

Congratulations on the big one. Your post was really very helpful. I'm about to take the GRE in a month and hope I get to share a success story like yours here. Cheers!

From what you have written, it's evident that you're not a native speaker and you need to improve you basic English skills first. I think you should focus on reading newspapers.That has helped me quite a lot

Yes, you get to see your score immediately. AWA score takes 1 week from what I have heard from my friends who have taken the GRE

I think you're doing fine and shouldn't be doing a lot of new stuff. Just revise whatever you have done so far and you should be good to go