First-Time GRE Mistakes
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Taking a practice test is one of the most important first steps that you can take as you embark on studying for the GRE—even (especially) if you feel totally unprepared or anxious about doing so. Confronting this anxiety can be an important hurdle to overcome. You’ll also likely find some surprises in your results, both positive and negative, that will shape your study plan.
For these reasons, I’m adamant that all of my students take a practice test shortly after beginning a class. I then work with each of them to review this test and decide on key takeaways for their first weeks of studying. In reviewing these tests, I’ve noticed three common first-time GRE mistakes that students make. Fortunately, these three mistakes are relatively easy to begin correcting once you’re aware of them.
Doing Too Much in Your Head
Doing work (particularly math) in one’s head can feel like the efficient strategy. When I first took the test, this was one of the many first-time GRE mistakes that I made. I felt like picking up the pencil and writing down my arithmetic and reading notes would waste precious seconds.
It turns out that the opposite is true. Sure, doing algebra in your head might be more efficient for problem one. By problem twenty, though, fatigue has set in, and all that mental calculation starts to slow down. Writing down all your work helps improve overall efficiency and reduce fatigue. Writing out your work also helps you to avoid careless errors, and, if you do make an error, it’s easier to catch it if all your work is on the paper in front of you.
Being Stubborn
Being persistent can be an asset in many endeavors. When taking the GRE, however, it’s also important to know when to give up on a problem. Each problem on the test counts the same, regardless of its difficulty level, and questions don’t get harder within each section. For these reasons, it’s important to get all the way to the end of each Quant and each Verbal section. Most of us are used to taking tests where the goal is to get every problem right. For this reason, among others, most first-time GRE takers tend to dig in their heels when confronted with difficult problems early on in a section. They spend twice as much time as they should on these problems, and then run out the clock before they get to question twenty, often missing easier questions at the end of the section.
You don’t need to get every problem right in order to get a great score on the GRE; in fact, it can be more important to purposefully guess and skip on a problem here or there in order to maximize the number of questions correct within each section.
Making Decisions Too Quickly
Stubborn in some places, first-timers often rush in others, in part to make up for lost time. I most frequently see students rushing on Vocabulary questions and on Quantitative Comparison questions (the ones that give you two quantities and ask which is bigger). On these problems, there is often an “obvious” choice—an answer that, at first glance, looks correct. And, on both Vocabulary and Quant Comp problems, this “obvious” choice is usually a trap, designed by the test makers to catch students who are rushing and making easy assumptions.
For these questions in particular, it’s important that you slow down enough to think through all of the information presented and make a logical, evidence-based decision about which answer choice is the best fit.
In general, pacing on the test should feel consistent: efficient, but not rushed. Writing down your work will help with this and prevent you from making first-time GRE mistakes. Write down more if you rush, and pay attention to when the work on your paper is starting to pile up to no effect—this might be a sign it’s time to move on to the next problem. ?
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Cat Powell is a Manhattan Prep instructor based in New York, NY. She spent her undergraduate years at Harvard studying music and English and is now pursuing an MFA in fiction writing at Columbia University. Her affinity for standardized tests led her to a 169Q/170V score on the GRE. Check out Cat’s upcoming GRE courses here.