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GRE was my dream from a very long time. I think I got to know about it when I was in 3rd semester of my engineering degree from a friend of mine. From then I used to keep looking at US universities websites, GRE forums on orkut and blogs related to it. I tried to prepare for GRE many times but always gave up after 2 or 3 day while mugging up the huge barron wordlist. Contacted coaching institute many times but never joined them due to hectic schedule of college. Though it was not that hectic but HEY! It is engineering college dude! We have so many things to do. 8th Semester At last I got serious about GRE after my 8th semester. It was too late though, I must have given GRE after my 6th semester. The pattern change was something which made me serious about taking GRE before it happens. I read several numbers of posts saying that new GRE will be a hard nut to crack. Since, I was not good in verbal I decided to take GRE before the pattern changes. At that time I had offer letters of 3 companies which I tried to delay as long as possible to take my GRE. My GRE date was on 16 July which I rescheduled to 30 July so that I can get 30 days time for my GRE as my engineering was getting over in last week of may. Giving GRE after my 8th semester was a very tough decision to make. To prepare for it I have to leave Accenture as they had their training of 14 days in June and joining from 6 July. I really wanted to join Accenture among the 3 job offers I had. But as it is said to get something in your life you have to leave something. We have to make choices in our lives and stick to them! GRE Study Plan One Month I joined Princeton review classes in Bangalore; it was a crash course batch (as they name it) with only 3 students in it. I will not get in any detail of what it covered and how it was because it’s not worth mentioning here. Just know this no matter what other says of coaching classes being good, they make you practice regularly, you give some hours daily, they teach you tips and trick etc. etc. etc. remember only thing coaching classes are just wastage of time because: No one can make you remember words (Note: Wordlists are still very important for new GRE else reading comprehension and test completion will be “Taare Zameen Par”. The tips and tricks to solve verbal questions are already written in book. If you are planning to do M.S. then you already have enough skills to read and understand a book on yourself. You don’t need a mentor to guide you. Maths: If you are science students it will not be a problem for you at all, just need a little but practice. For others who are weak in maths you can easily practice maths daily from a good book like Nova Math Prep Course (the best for old pattern; don’t know how good it is for new pattern) and score good in maths. If you are seriously very bad in maths then you may need someone to guide you. A friend, relative good in quants will do. No need to spend 10 to 20k for it. AWA: No one can make you a good writer in 1 or 2 months. They only tell the structure and what all to write and what not to write; which you can find in any book. (Barron’s is sufficient to know structure and ETS official guide have many sample essays with a scoring of 6) All sections covered. So, in short avoid coaching classes unless you have lots of money and even if you have then buy a new cell phone or keep it to explore GOA! After getting an awesome score in GRE. Note: This is my personal experience GRE Study plan for one month, there are many people who feel that coaching classes are beneficial; no offense to them. Coming back – GRE Study Plan I just had 28 days to prepare. In those 28 days; it took me some time to get adjusted to the city and the place where I was staying (my friend’s house). It was a tough time I was not able to prepare much at my friend’s house (With movies, parties, etc.) Time passed like a flowing river. At last 30th June was on calendar. I was not completely done with my preparations. I had just complete Princeton Review Hit parade and Beyond the Hit Parade and 7 or 8 GRE wordlists from major tests wordlist. Quant’s was not a matter of concern for me and for AWA I was not bothered after practicing 3 essays. First GRE Exam : 30 June 2011 Quant’s: 740 Verbal: 350 AWA: 3.5 Total: 1090 I was completely dejected by my score especially in verbal section. Though I never got above 400 in my mock tests but I was expected database to repeat and above all expecting a lot from my luck to score more than 1200. But I was hapless. It was a tough time. I did not know at all what to do next; whether to take GRE in old pattern one more time or take it in new pattern. Many people told me not to take it again in old pattern as I will not see a lot of improvement in just 20 days. But at last no matter what others say it is always your call. Finally, I decided to take again in old pattern only, there were 3 reasons: 3. I did not wanted my 25 days work to go in waste like this and again invest money in new books 2. I have already lost 1 job offer and delaying it further would have made things worse. 1. the most vital reason: I believed in myself. I believed that with a constant and dedicated effort of 20 days I will be able to crack it! 2nd July I was back in my city. The only thing I did from 2 July to 20 July was studying You should not believe on that completely because you know real engineering students never take studies seriously: P (We have so many things to in life: D). But from morning 10 a.m. to 2 a.m. 90% of time I spent on studying. The only thing I did was mugging barrons wordlist nothing else. I was completely sure about the fact that I don’t need any preparation for quants and if luck don’t f*** me this time i will get 790 or 800. My GRE Study Plan Included many things: Do barrons wordlist, revise them, practice big book etc etc… But we only have 24 hours in a day. I was not able to do everything till 20th. But I managed to master 40 wordlist of barrons, gave 5 to 6 mock test only verbal section and squeeze everything out of powerprep. On 21st July I was in Bangalore. I had already decided that I am not going to study anything on the last day. But anxiety – I kept on revising words. My second attempt 22 July 2011 I got AWA section first. Essay question were awkward, both of them. It was hard to think what to write every sentence I wrote looks contradictory to myself only. Anyways I finished it off with whatever came in my head. I think I wrote okay not very good. God fetch me 3 at least: D Argument question was easy. Done! Then I got verbal section I did first 10 questions with lot of patience and tried to be very sure about what I am marking as an answer. After mastering 40 wordlist I was able to handle the questions perfectly. Even if I did not the meaning of the 1 or 2 word I used POE turned out to be a life saver. When I got my quants section I was very much sure that I fought well in verbal war! I was not able to do quants properly at all. I was so much excited after my verbal, I was just wishing for quant’s section to end and I can see my scores. I knew that I have to control myself and fight back in quant’s again same as I fought in verbal. I took 5 minutes to cool myself and now I have 40 minutes for maths. 40 minutes were sufficient to do 28 simple questions of quants. I got one huge table and 2 or 3 questions based on that. As it was after 20th question I decided to play “Akar Bakar Bambay Bo” guessed them and moved ahead. Solved all the questions and then clicked show scores with my fingers crossed (crossed? don’t remember because I was completely numb after seeing my score) My GRE score in second attempt : Verbal : 630 Quant’s : 790 AWA : 3.5 (Same as 1st attempt :D ) Total : 1420 The first time I added them, I was like HOLY ****!!! No I must have made some mistake; added them 3 4 times more on screen then with pencil and paper and then I was sure YAH!! Its 1420. Then I selected 4 universities and got out of the center as soon as I can. I marked all A’s in feedback about the center even though it was not very good. HUH!!! This is just my personal experience may be I am wrong at many places saying something or maybe you think 1420 is a crap anything below 1550 is bad then : hey it’s my experience. Even you can post your own here, eagerly waiting to read it . If you want to learn something from my experience. Here is a list of things to learn: Most Important DON’T COUNT THE DAYS, MAKE THEM COUNT. (Now I can write quotations ... GRE) Always always and always believe in yourself! I know all this seems like a lecture, it was same with me. It seems like a lecture when you read it but afterwards you realize how correct it is. Now things to learn if you want to else you can close the window Practice a lot. Give lots of mock test. Don’t think that you can crack it without wordlist. Even for new GRE you need to know the words. Don’t waste time in mastering things which you are already good at. (This is basically for quants) Use mnemonicdictionary.com to learn words with mnemonics. It is very helpful. Use a good book to learn how to solve questions, the tips and tricks. Don’t join coaching classes unless it is very necessary. Don’t keep any expectations. Just give your best. This is one the major reason which affected my performance in first attempt. I was just wishing to get a decent score while solving every question. When you are giving the test don’t think anything other than the questions. Try your best to answer it correctly, if you don’t know the answer make educated guess and move on. It is a CAT!!! But in any case don’t try to guess many questions, 1 or 2 here and there are okay. Squeeze out everything what powerprep offers you. Give it minimum 10 times. Also do the practice questions. Have a track of your scores; the average of all the scores is approximately the score you will get in GRE. (I think this is true for new pattern also) Don’t study a lot day before you exam. In my first attempt I was studying in my test center also. It is not an engineering subject paper; one night stands are not useful. They will only make things worse for you. Save your mettle for the actual exam. Be very calm and composed while giving the test. This is the biggest secret; do it and see the difference. Don’t depend on your luck and database. Prepare so much that you can easily say – F*** you luck!!! HUH!!!! What else, I think this is all I have to say. If you have any genuine queries please use the comment box below. Please don’t start an argument in comment section about this post. This is just my experience and we all have many better things to do than arguing: P GRE is simple, if you stick to basic. Dare to do something else; you are pretty much _____ and that that too very badly. (Like my first attempt ) Take care! Hope this helps. Even if a single reader get benefited from this then all my effort in writing this long post will not go in waste.

Just finished the GRE. Pretty happy with my score, as i think it is higher than any Clinical Psych PhD program average that I've seen. I studied for a few months about an hour a day. Got the Kaplan books, which were quite helpful. But be aware that the Kaplan practice tests are significantly harder than the actual test. I was averaging app. 680Q, 650V for Kaplan's tests. The real test is much more like the PowerPrep tests, where I averaged 740Q, 720V. The math on the actual test was no so difficult as it was potentially tricky. It is fairly easy to fall into traps, if you are not careful. The verbal has a very extensive vocabulary; however, this is not the really hard part, since you can just memorize the words. The hard part, in my opinion, was the RC questions, which were extremely convoluted and lengthy, discussing relatively esoteric information. I studied for Quantitative by reviewing the Kaplan material, as well as using some online information, and I studied Verbal by simply memorizing a ridiculous amount of words (I would recommend the Barron list, or SOUNKEEPERS.com: GRE Vocabulary Builder - List. Also, there is a very nice website to practice antonyms GRE Antonym | GRE Antonym Practice: 1200 Actual Questions. Hope this helps! Good luck!

hi i am in my senior year of college and will be graduating next year. i am looking to apply for a masters in financial engineering in fall next year in to any of the top schools. like 1 uc berkley 2 princeton 3 carnegie mellon 4 columbia university 5 cornell 6 gatech 7 kellog 8 wharton my gre score was an above average 1430 . q 770 v 660. awa 3.5. my current cgpa is 3.84 upon 4 i might be able to get it to a 3.9 by the time i apply. i did a summer internship in a bay area financial services company for two months. apart from that i have no other previous experience. what are my odds of getting into these schools? are they too far a dream or do i have a shot at any of them?

I started out with my GRE prep almost 6 months before the exam. I know what I got isn't something one should target for (there are people here who've got 1600 after all !!), but still, I believe anyone can get what I got, provided one has enough time/perseverance in their hands... Let me give my background a bit - I've been educated in English medium schools all throughout, which had inculcated a real passion for books. I used to read voraciously, but I never really paid attention to increasing my vocabulary, preferring to guess or understand words from their contexts rather than looking them up. The first time I picked up Barron's, I was amazed to see the actual meanings of some of the words I thought I knew !! I therefore decided to brush up my basics a bit first - started reading Norman Lewis' Word Power. I read it from cover to cover including all exercises, tests and revisions, in little less than a month - not a very good pace admittedly, but I didn't want to rush over stuff once again, coupled with the fact I didn't get more than a hour per day on weekdays (I'm currently working in a reputed MNC, where I have quite a bit of responsibility to handle). NL really, really opened my eyes, by showing the "bridges" between various familiar words - I couldn't recommend it more (even if you never plan to write GRE, do go through it if you at all care about English as a language). Next, I thought I did something clever by enrolling for a widely advertised "test prep course" (details of my experience about it can be found here). I'm skipping that part here, as I don't recommend it. I started going through Barron's Wordlists, though not in the "traditional" way (flash cards and other stuff). Each morning, I used to pick a wordlist, read all the words in it, marking the difficult ones and writing them down separately (without their meanings) - and at night, I used to look at that sheet, and fill up the meanings as I recalled them. This was really helpful in assimilating the entire wordlist - proceeding at this rate, I finished the entire Barron's list in about 2 months. After which, it was simply revising the wordlists again from 1-50 - at first pass, 2 WL/day, then 5 Wl/day...till 2 days before GRE, when I was going through 25 WL/ day !! All this while, I didn't neglect my quants...contrary to what many people claim, it is NOT a walk in the park if you are aiming for 800. One has to be really careful to avoid the "obvious" answers (IMHO, the real talent in the test makers is evident in the way they come up with wrong answers that are oh-so-close to the correct one !!). I went through Peterson's GRE Math Bible - its simply awesome, and if you were even a moderate in math at High School, you'd find it really helpful !! I took a month to go through this book (the last month before GRE), and the "Medium" and "Hard" problems were the ones most useful... I also practised AWA from a book title "Answers to the Real Essay Questions" by M.Stewart - its a great book, not for the essays and arguments (pls, pls, do NOT try to mug the essays, its an exercise in futility !!), but for the valuable tips and advise in attempting the questions. Especially the "analyze an argument" section - trust me, once you've gone through the tips in the book, and looked at 5-10 sample answers to actual arguments, there's nothing left for GRE to test you about in that section !! The "Issue-perspective" section is a lot subjective thing though - I've always enjoyed writing essays, so I didn't practice more than 2-3 essays before the exam. If you feel you are weak in this area, practise more and then compare your attempt with the one in the book, to learn how to enhance your answer. In the final week before the exam, I did nothing but Revise WL from my notebook Practice Big Book Verbals (towards the end, I consistently got all the RC's right, scoring on an avg 36/38 questions) Take online CATS. About the CATs I've used, let me list them in descending order of their accuracy and usefulness: PowerPrep - no question about it, its the real deal. Scores :- 1460 (700V, 760Q) - a month before GRE 1520 (720V, 800Q) - a day before GRE [*]Princeton Online CAT - you get a free online test once you register on their website, and 4 more if you buy their book. I didn't even look at the book, only took the CATS. Got an avg of ~740 in verbal and 800 in quants in the 4 tests, again pretty close to what I got [*]Barron's. I'm rating it third because it doesn't give an actual score, and I guess thats because its not a CAT per-se, but the level of questions were really challenging here, without being unreasonably long. If you get all questions correct here, you are looking at a potential score of 1600 IMHO !! [*]Kaplan - pretty good test questions, but again, no comprehensive scores at the end like Barrons. Questions are easy though, but good to keep yourself sharp !! Oh...and I forgot one of the best resources I got for FREE !! For those of who are working (like me), you can use those 5-10 minutes of breaks in office to sharpen your vocabulary like I did, using Number2.com :: Free Online Test Prep !! Its amazing for a free website - the level of words gradually increases as your vocabulary builds up (towards the end, I got 200/200 right in the Vocab Builder section there, all words being level 5 difficulty - whereas I started with about 90% accuracy in level 3 words 6 months back !!). For more bang/buck, ask a friend (or simply use a second email id) to register as a "tutor" for yourself - that account would get weekly "summaries" of your progress, including the time spent, words attempted, difficulty of words, accuracy, average standing w.r.t the rest of the community etc, which would really help focus your efforts !! Thats about it for now - I think I've mentioned everything here. Let me know if you have any queries, and I'll be more than happy to answer them !! PS: One test tip - you can legitimately guess questions randomly at the very end of the test !! At the end of quants, I had 2 mins to solve 2 questions. The first one involved computations which would have eaten up my time, so I blindly guessed it and moved on to the last question, which I then solved correctly. I still got 800, so no reason anyone else can't do the same !! PPS: Just got my AWA scores - I was expecting a 5.5, but had to settle for 5. Well, I guess I should have written my essay a bit more coherently, as I'm sure my argument rated a 6 :)

Just like many other people who have benefited from these forums, I was also benefited. Reading through the posts, I really got a good idea about the GRE and this helped me perform in the test better. My preparation time spanned from Early feb 2011 till may 2011, nearly 4 months. Here is the list of scores I obtained in my practice tests. REAL GRE: 1430 ( 760Q and 670V ):tup: Princeton Diagnostic test(Free test) : 960 ( 610Q and 350V ) Princeton CAT I: 1160 ( 650Q and 510V ) The leap from the diagnostic test to CAT I by 200 points is indeed bizzare, because I took the CAT I in about two weeks after the diagnostic test. I read some few words, probably 40 in those two weeks from the princeton hit parade. May be that increased my verbal from 350 to 510. Still, I believe the scoring algorithm in the diagnostic test was different from the CAT algorithm. Princeton CAT II: 1220 ( 690Q and 530V ) Princeton CAT III: 1160 ( 650Q and 510V ) Princeton CAT IV: 1220 ( 690Q and 530V ) Barron's CAT(contained in the CD ROM): 1260 ( 740Q and 520V ) I was really happy with the increase in the quants score. In the last week before the exam, I took the following tests. Powerprep I: 1380 ( 730Q and 650V ) Kaplan CAT I: 1370 ( 740Q and 620V ) Kaplan CAT II: 1340 ( 790Q and 550V ) Powerprep II: 1360 ( 670Q and 690V ) Powerprep II(second attempt - with about 2 to 3 questions repeating in both verbal and quants): 1410 ( 770Q and 640V ) From my experience, my real GRE score was way better than the powerprep score. Regarding math, pacing was the problem. I took a lot of time in the initial 15 questions to make sure I ended up on a higher score. I learned this strategy from the forums. Regarding verbal, I concentrated on the barron' 3500 master word list and the 27 big book tests. Revise, revise and revise the word list till you are confident. Nothing beats the kind of confidence when you go into the exam hall with a good vocab. If it is not possible to go through the entire list, PLEASE DO MAKE SURE YOU ARE THOROUGH WITH THE HIGH FREQUENCY 333 WORDS. Last but not the least, just like all the other people say, staying calm is the key. I really did not expect a 750+ in quants, but i made my mind clear and went ahead with the verbal with a clear head. I guess that helped me to do the verbal section well. So, just dont try to analyze how you have done a particular section while going on to the next. Simply go ahead, because you cannot predict your performance. AWA sections were relatively easy. The scores will be received in two weeks' time. So, to all those taking up your GRE, all the best:tup: Nothing beats the Barron's prep material. Be confident. Think positive. You will succeed :)