How To Take a GRE Practice Test
Regularly taking GRE practice tests (but not too many!) is how you find out whether your studying is working and what to focus on next. But in order to take a practice test perfectly, you need a bit of…practice.
How to Study: Reviewing a GRE Practice Test
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You’ve been studying for the GRE for a while now, and you’ve taken at least two GRE practice tests. (If not, start with this article instead!) Last time, we started discussing how to review a GRE practice test at a high level. This time, we’ll go even further: you can learn something from every single question on your GRE practice test. Here’s how. Read more
What You Do Not Need to Know for the GRE
There’s a pretty complete list of GRE study topics available at the ETS’s website. Here’s the list for Quant, and here’s where to find the corresponding lists for Verbal. These lists can show you what content you definitely need to know for the GRE. But, in this article, I’d like to complement them by doing the opposite: show you what you may think you need to learn for the GRE, but really don’t.
Why Was My Official GRE Score Lower Than My Practice Scores?
If the title of this article applies to you, I’m sorry that your official GRE score surprised you! It happens to the best of us, and you’re allowed (and even encouraged) to take the GRE twice. But before you do, you should figure out why your official GRE score wasn’t as high as your practice scores.
Preparing for the GRE: What You’ll Really Learn
In a way, preparing for the GRE is your first graduate school experience. It can be infuriating. It can feel completely pointless and utterly unfair. But it can also teach you lessons that have nothing to do with the content—lessons that, if you let them, may stay with you for the rest of your life.
Quick GRE Math Tricks
Mastering GRE math means challenging yourself to improve your executive reasoning, on top of re-learning math rules you may not have seen for years. It’s not always an easy process, but there are a few quick math tricks that might earn you some points!
Common Math Errors on the GRE
Quick: here’s an expression from a GRE math problem. How do you simplify it?
√214+217
As a long-time GRE teacher, I like collecting problems like these: ones that often reveal the math misconceptions we don’t even know we have! There are a lot of different wrong ways to simplify this expression. Try it out before you keep reading—then we’ll look at some other math myths and common mistakes, and how to avoid second-guessing on the GRE.
Which Questions Should I Skip on the GRE?
One of my guilty TV pleasures is a British quiz show called “The Chase.” I like to watch it on the spin bike—there’s something about seeing people with British accents stammer, panic, and forget the names of their own children that makes a hard workout seem a little shorter. And as a trivia show, it feels vaguely more educational than, say, “Keeping Up With the Kardashians”.
Plus, believe it or not, it illustrates one of the most important things you’ll learn while studying for the GRE: knowing yourself is more important than knowing the math.
How to Review a GRE Vocabulary Question
If you want to master the GRE, think like a scientist. Each practice text completion or sentence equivalence question you miss gives you two new pieces of data. When you put enough data together, you learn, grow, and improve. Read more
How to Review a GRE Quantitative Comparison Question
When you miss a GRE Quantitative Comparison problem, it’s easy to feel like you’ve been “tricked” by the test. You know the saying “fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice, shame on you?” On the GRE, it goes the other way. Getting tricked once is a learning opportunity. But if you’re getting tricked in the same way more than once, look at how you’re reviewing problems. Read more