What is the GRE Exam? How Should I Start Preparing for GRE?

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A standardized test, the Graduate Record Examination(GRE) measures Verbal, Mathematical and Analytical Writing skills. The test intends to aid Graduate Schools (of all fields other than business) assess the potential of the applicants for advanced study. Most universities in the US, while inviting applications from prospective students, ask for GRE® scores.

The examination is entirely a Computer-based Test, and no two students get an identical set of questions. The test is scored on a maximum of 340. The GRE® Score alone cannot guarantee admission into a school – the test is only one of the major factors taken into consideration in the long process of an applicant getting admitted into a graduate school that he/she desires.

What Are The Qualifications For GRE Test?

How should I plan my preparation for GRE in a Month?

1. Create a practice test timeline: One thing you need from day 1 is a timeline of when you will take practice tests, and you should use your coaching centre to make the tests frequent and graded in difficulty. Only by taking many practice tests can you truly immerse yourself in the world of the GRE, and get comfortable with the interface, the question grading, and the 4 hour grind of sitting in one place using your brain for a lot of different things. In a one month prep period, practice is as important as new learning – maybe even more!

2. Practice Quant smart: Quant is all about understanding and practice. If you had 3 to 6 months, you might have spent a lot of time in understanding before you moved on to practice. In your shortened time window, you might be well served to prioritize topics that you are confident that you know and quickly practice a representative cross section of problems from those topics. If you ace all of them, you can cross that topic off your preparation list. This ensures that you are able to reduce the list of chapters that you revise in detail by up to 80%, and helps you concentrate on and treat your weakest areas.

3. Study Verbal smart: GRE Verbal is not something that is the exclusive preserve of those who have vast vocabularies, or those who have spent a year improving their word power. Instead of studying 3000 words, you can group those same 3000 high-frequency words into about 300 high probability word groups, within which every word has the same meaning. This is a 90% reduction in meaning memorization, and converts a lot of rote learning into pattern recognition, something which correlates more highly with intelligence and logic, and less with time spent in preparation. Study Verbal smart and a month is more than enough.

4. Beat your target in each practice test; only move upwards: Now that you have a practice test regimen, it’s important to get better and better. With a longer time window, you might have the luxury of dipping up and down in tests scores, and analyzing why those happened. When it’s a question of just a month, you need to move upwards constantly – this is necessary for both your morale and your final performance. One way to do this is to identify a big problem area from each test that you do (with the help of your coach) and fix this in the next test.

5. Compare your performance to those who have many months of preparation more than you: Your final GRE score will not be calculated against those who have tried to prepare in just one month, so you need to get used to the full weight of expectations very soon. To make this happen, you should look around you in your coaching class batch, and consistently try to perform as well as those who have been around much longer than you. This is the quickest way to get very good, very fast.

One thing you need from day 1 is a timeline of when you will take practice tests, and you should use your coaching centre to make the tests frequent and graded in difficulty. Only by taking many practice tests can you truly immerse yourself in the world of the GRE, and get comfortable with the interface, the question grading, and the 4 hour grind of sitting in one place using your brain for a lot of different things. In a one month prep period, practice is as important as new learning – maybe even more!

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