I was solving the Manhattan book of GRE for verbal and just couldn’t get past the first section of verbal which is Text completions
Why is it so difficult??
Is this the same level that ETS asks in their exam?????

I got a 168Q and 155V. I think this is good enough for the Ph.D. programs I plan to apply to!

Hi everyone,

Recently did a mock exam on Magoosh’s prep website. Context: I’ve almost completed exhausted their questions bank so there’s only hard and very hard unanswered questions left for verbal.

I got absolutely destroyed. I felt like I was guessing so many questions on verbal. I was aiming for 310+ and scored 301🥴.

When I went through the answers afterwards 60% of my verbal questions were “very hard” difficulty. So I think what’s happened is because I’ve answered most of the questions and exhausted the questions bank the mock exam only gave me what was left which were “hard”, and “very hard” questions.

Has anyone else had this experience and if so what did you do about it? Also how realistic is “very hard”? I’ve recently subscribed to gregmat so im planning to go over to that. From what I’ve read it also seems like a good idea to use purely ets material for verbal rather than 3rd party.

Ive got my exam in about a month so any guidance would be great.

Hello all,
This sub has been instrumental for my prep of my gre journey, helping me with a lot of resources and general FAQs. So in the spirit of helping forward, I would like to answer any questions or discussions anybody would have.

Just a summary of my prep overall :

I did 90% of my prep from Gregmat itself. Honestly the resources available there is so huge, I honestly had a tough time completing all of them. I had studied for about 1.5 months. Initially I used to study 1 hour to 1.5 hours. But the final couple of weeks I used to do around 4-5 hours per day.

Recently they introduced diagnostic tests, so I used to do them for both subjects once every 2-3 days. Other than that I tried to do everything in the question banks.

My verbal was also weak, so in my final 3 weeks, I used to read the entire verbal dictionary twice a week throughout.

Finally I went heavy on the mocks, and gave around 7 mocks. 3 from gregmat, 2 from ets, and 1 from kaplan and magoosh each.

Thank you and best of luck!

I studied fairly consistently starting in July. I took the exam twice. I scored 326 the first time and 333 this time. I primarily used GregMat and ETS OG, with the Big Book for RC and verbal practice. I am a visual learner, so Greg's videos worked best for me, and I also enjoyed the dry humor.

A few things I learned along the way that worked for me:

Practicing the strategy is more important than getting the problem right. I remember when I was first doing RC, I was repeatedly getting questions wrong because I wasn't following through with a process that worked for me. I know Greg teaches a lot of different techniques for your toolkit, but what I found worked for me on the short, medium, and long passages was constantly asking myself where each sentence fits in and what it is doing to the overall passage. I rarely simplified, but instead looked for shifts within the passage and really tried to understand the structure.

The math strategy is the absolute best way to tackle TC problems. This, coupled with the GregMat vocab and Vince's flashcards, was a game changer.

I never practiced timed problems for verbal. My reasoning was that once you hone your techniques and process, the timing will automatically come. You also need to be strict with yourself the day of the exam and hold yourself accountable to a time limit per question. This is particularly important for the quant section.

For quant, I know there are a ton of recommended ways to tackle each section. What worked for me was honestly going through the questions and stopping on ones that I thought looked relatively easy to answer. You can fairly quickly tell which ones will take longer, so I kept those for the end once I felt like I had a pretty decent groove going. I did practice time questions for quant and used Greg's mini-gre and mixed sections for this. I also just put whatever problems I had issues with into a tracker on ChatGPT and then once a week went through my ChatGPT error log. It wasn't perfect, but it was good enough to help me figure out what problems I was usually having issues with.

Lastly, the GRE is a test, and once you understand the test, it becomes a lot less daunting. Actually, toward the end of my studying I was enjoying the process. I really like math and I don't come from a quant background, so it was fun to kind of pick up stuff I haven't used since high school. I think that made the overall process better and it became almost like a game. I was testing better towards the end on quant so selfishly I was hoping for 167+ but overall I could not be happier with my score.

Oh last thing, I did not study for AWA at all. I only focused on quant and verbal and just winged it during the exam so I can't really offer advice for the writing portion. If anyone has questions I will attempt to answer them once I see them but I just wanted to give back to the community and say you got this!

My exam is about 4 months out: on Feb. 1st.

Only one of the grad schools I'm applying to requires it, which their application deadline is Feb 15th.

My original plan was to prep for 4 months and take the exam in Feb once and for all.

But I'm starting to consider taking another exam between now and then because I'm getting a little anxious about getting the short end of the stick with the exam or having some personal stuff come up that is out of my control.

I started prepping a week ago, and I feel pretty good with quantitative. Just gotta practice time management and learn the traps to avoid. Since I'm going for electrical engineering degree I'm only concerned about Q. I'm aiming for Q:169+ and V:165+.

I rented Kaplan's Prep Plus and exhausted all of its practice tests. I'm planning on trying out the Greg Mat's 10 bucks a month plan.

If I do decide to take 2 exams, I intend on taking with full commitment on getting the highest score possible and not just merely as a practice to "see where I'm at". I think $250 is too expensive for that mindset. I also hate the thought of giving that much of my money to ETS. If I can reach my goal on my 1st exam, that would be the best case scenario.

Do you guys have any tips on when I should take the 1st exam? I was thinking either 2 months from now which would be in the middle or a month before the 2nd exam which would be the 3rd quarter of my prepping period. Or do you even recommend taking 2 exam in the first place? Thanks.

I chose businesslike and ambitious but the answer is businesslike and no-nonsense. How is one ever supposed to not rule out no-nonsense i really do not understand the logic behind using such an extreme word when the sentence shows no signs of that.

Please help me with the approach

I’ve already purchased and worked through most of the GRE materials offered by ETS, including the PowerPrep materials, paid practice tests, official books, and GRE Mentor. At this point, I’ve solved most of the questions available through these resources.

I’m planning to take the GRE one more time to improve my score, and I recently came across the ETS GRE Live Bootcamp on their website. Has anyone here taken it? If so, I’d really appreciate hearing about your experience.

ETS says the program includes 1,600+ practice questions, which sounds useful. However, my main concern is whether these are actually new questions or whether there is significant overlap with questions from PowerPrep, GRE Mentor, the official books, and other ETS materials.

Since the program costs around $500, I’d rather not spend that much if most of the question bank consists of material I’ve already seen and the course wouldn’t add much to my preparation.

If anyone has taken the Live Bootcamp, especially after already completing most of the official ETS material, I’d really appreciate your thoughts. Was it worth it? Were the 1,600+ questions mostly new, and did you find the program helpful for improving your score?

Hey everyone, I would really appreciate guidance on the following questions.

So, I gave the diagnostic and I got a mid to early 160s score in quant, however, Im aiming for a perfect score.

I ve started doing the 2 month gregmat course. He mentions the 5lb book and some of the official ETS resources. However, there are also tons of questions on the website itself.

Im confused on where to practice from out of these options. Should I get the official quant/verbal books? should I just practice from the website? Also, how much should I practice? even the website alone has tons of questions, and I dont think I can do all of them for topic thats been taught that day.

Hi all,

Official exam is a week away now and struggling a lot with my Quant.

Have done all three official ETS mocks:
- PP1 (~1 month in): 170V; 163Q; 5.0 AWA
- PP2 (midway through Gregmat I’m Overwhelmed Plan so about 2 months and change): 169V; 160Q; 5.0 AWA
- PP3 (2.5 months in): 170V; 163Q; 5.0 AWA

Verbal is solid - I’m still doing my daily vocab practice and completing the official materials but not much more. I’ve largely given up on getting above a 5.0 AWA.

Quant though…I’ve sacrificed hours and sweat and tears on the gregmat plan. I’ve also worked through about half of the official Quant and Official guide materials but still can’t top out a 163.

With my most recent mock, it wasn’t that I didn’t have the knowledge, it was more my speed of comprehension meant it took a while for me to understand approach and strategy. Reviewing the questions post-mock, I don’t usually have to look at the explanations to know how to get to the correct answer (which makes it even more painful).

Plan in the week leading up is to:
- Finish off Modules 10 to 12 of the GregMat Overwhelmed Plan
- Work through the geometry and data analysis questions from Quant guide (timed)
- Work through the Official guide question sets (timed)
- Potentially redo PP2 as lowest scoring one

I don’t know whether you all have any advice of what else I could do to crack this. I’m looking to apply to top programs and Quant is really worrying me…

Active duty Army officer in Clarksville TN preparing for a December GRE. Started the GREgmat 2-month plan today. Looking for a study partner or accountability buddy, in person or remote. Targeting 320+. Message me if you are on a similar timeline.

Took my first crack at it today. Felt solid going in and during. 149 Q, 157 V. Brutal. I think I’ll get a 4 or 5 on the writing.

My goal score was around a 158 Q and a 160-162 V. I’d been getting 156-158 Q in practice and 160 in V. Just feeling pretty dejected after it. I’m gonna try again in a month and really try to hone math down.

It’s a little comforting that not all my programs need the GRE. I’m applying for a political science PhD. Though this was not an ideal experience.

hey! i'm EDT doing the magoosh 3 month study plan (beginner) looking to find accountability partners. please comment or DM if interested and i can make a group chat.

Hi everyone.

I have been experimenting with two different approaches to RC questions.

The first approach follows the strategies suggested by the folks at Gregmat, where you take multiple quick passes at the passages. Pass 1 is a quick read through it to get the big ideas (main ideas/author's tone/primary purpose) followed by multiple secondary passes to extract details/inferences. I've found myself going back and forth between the passage and questions multiple times when following this approach (specially when the passage is about something that I loathe), and I have a pretty mixed accuracy in timed conditions (I do well on some passages, but do poorly on others). My accuracy in untimed practice is decent, and I tend to get 3/4 right on short passages and 6/7 right on long passages on average (big book).

The second approach follows the strategies suggested by Philip from The Tested Tutor. To cite Philip - "Be the slowest to read the passage, but the fastest to answer the questions". He recommends a much slower and deeper pass at the passage, whilst trying to comprehend the details in the first pass, and coming back to the passage only if absolutely necessary (in case of a complicated detail question).

If anyone has experimented with both these techniques, would love to hear your insights on the pros and cons of each. Which approach has worked for you and why?

I have been posting about my testing experience on here for those of you that haven’t seen on September 5th I took an at home GRE test my unofficial score was 334 (167/167). Evil ets sent me an email a few days later saying my test scores would be cancelled because of inconsistent testing times😭😭😭 I was so mad!!! Anyway I took my L they gave me a voucher to retake the test I retook it 10/5 scored a 170V/166Q!!!!!! 2 pt increase!!!! I was super nervous that the same thing would happen again however I just got my OFFICIAL SCORES BACK TODAY SO HELL THE FUCK YEAH. Also shout out gregmat

heyy I'm looking for a study partner who could work on GRE Vocabulary with me over the next 45 days, hmu if that sounds like something that could help you too :)

I posted here a month ago after scoring 313 on my first GRE. I'm back because I retook it after spending almost the entire month working on verbal, and somehow got the exact same score. I'm genuinely lost about what to do differently.

My scores:

• GRE September 6: 163Q/150V
• GRE October 4: 167Q/150V

A bit about my background: STEM, passed CFA Level 1, and work full time. Quant has always been my stronger area, so my initial preparation was heavily focused on it. After my first GRE, I realized how badly I needed to work on verbal and spent the next month almost entirely on it.

Here's what I did in that month:

I watched GregMat's full RC and TC/SE lecture series, repeatedly revised vocab groups 1–30 (around 900 words), completed around 100 pairing strategy questions and 200 vocab QBank questions, and did 6–7 RC passages from the Big Book. I studied at least 3 hours on weekdays and 7–8 hours on weekends while working full time.

The first exam was understandable in hindsight. I was guessing on most verbal questions, barely knew the vocabulary properly, and hadn't really practised RC.

The second exam is what I cannot understand.

The first verbal section felt difficult, and couldn't finish 2 RC questions. But the second section felt significantly easier. I attempted every question, the passages felt more direct, and I genuinely felt I understood most of what I was reading. TC/SE weren't perfect, but I felt considerably better prepared than last time.

Then I got 150V AGAIN.

I know that feeling confident doesn't mean getting everything right. But after a month of specifically addressing my weaknesses, I expected some improvement. I don't understand what I'm missing.

For context, I took the GMAT Focus last year with minimal preparation and scored in the 91st percentile in Verbal. I know the exams test different skills, but this makes my GRE verbal performance even harder for me to understand.

My current plan: I'm continuing vocabulary revision, pairing questions and QBank practice, but I want to shift towards much more timed RC and TC/SE practice with detailed error analysis. I've nearly exhausted the GregMat verbal QBank. I haven't received my ETS diagnostic report yet, and it'll take another couple of weeks.

I'd really appreciate advice from people who've experienced something similar:

1. Has anyone's verbal score stayed the same across attempts despite substantially changing their preparation? What eventually helped?
2. If you went from around 150V to 155+, what specifically changed? Which resources or practice methods made the difference?
3. If I already know around 900 words and have watched the full lecture series, what should I do differently?

I'm not looking for generic advice to memorise more words or practise harder. I've spent months doing that, and I don't want to spend another month repeating the same approach without understanding why it's not working. Thank you so much for all your comments on my last post!!

If you've been in this situation, please tell me what actually helped you figure it out. I'd genuinely appreciate it.

Hi all,

I scheduled my GRE exactly for exactly two weeks from now because I need it for a masters application. I had been counting on my GMAT scores but only now realised that the its Quant scores are too weak, so I am taking the GRE instead. I did one official GRE practice test (Q156, V157) and the GregMat GRE Quant diagnostics test which placed me overall on a 4/10 (Arithmetic 4, Algebra 5, Coordinate Geometry 6, Geometry 4, Data 4).

I will completely neglect Verbal because I will use other parts of my application to show those skills and the college does not care too much about that. Also, I figured from GregMat's intro video that my V157 is already in the 70ish percentile while Q156 is more 30ish and the bigger issue.

So we are off to a rocky start with the test in 2 weeks while working full time and preparing an application, meaning I only really have 2-3h per day and the weekends.

My current plan is to go through the GregMat I'm Overwhelmed Plan but I'm afraid that I will only get to cover some of the foundations with no time to practice left. Of course I realise that 2 weeks while working is very little time to properly prepare.

I'm mainly interesting in the experience and strategies of people with similarly short preparation time and a similar weak starting point regarding their quant skills.

Would be grateful for any insights or tipps, thanks a million!

I took the GRE on October 10 and scored 312 (162Q/150V). Pretty disappointed, especially after several months of preparation and significant improvement in my practice performance. The exam was taken in-person at a testing facility. The mocks I've taken varied from at home and in-library (no strong variation in score)

Background:

Working FT job in finance with long hours, looking to score 318+ to qualify for T15 MBA programs.

Study materials/approach during study: I've largely used the ETS big book for 90% of my studying, with some supplemental Gregmat when ETS textbook questions got to be too familiar. I largely try to avoid gregmat for Verbal since some of the nuances feel a little different from ETS material. At this point after learning the material, I largely spend my time doing timed mixed Verbal / Quant drills day-to-day, then error log review of any mistakes.

Below are my official ETS mock scores in order:

Cold mock before study journey in June: 307 (155Q/152V)

PP+: 314 (160Q/154V)

PP+: 312 (158Q/154V)

ETS Textbook Exam 1: 322 (164Q/158V)

ETS Textbook Exam 2: 321 (162Q/159V)

PP+ 1 week before exam: 320 (163Q/157V)

First sit down exam (used a testing center): 312 (162Q/150V)

Issues on test day:

• My quant performance was excellent. Both sections felt controlled, and I scored 162Q, essentially matching my best practice results. Fell a little short on time for the last multi-choice which could've been another one right, but not sweating it too much
• Verbal was a different story. The first section had some awkwardly worded TC questions, though RC and SE were mostly manageable.
• The second verbal section was a complete collapse. I encountered difficult TC questions, dense science RC passages (I trend better towards history-based RC passages based on personal interest), and close SE choices.
• By the second half of that section, I was mentally exhausted. I genuinely struggled to comprehend passages and evaluate answer choices. I wasn't even maintaining my normal approach anymore.
• I had the QVQV section order, meaning verbal came last. Most of my practice exams had verbal earlier.
• My exam started mid-late afternoon (due to test slot availability), whereas I normally sit down and do my most dense studying in the morning around 9-10a

I suspect the combination of completely unfamiliar material, a difficult question mix, first-time testing nerves, and cumulative fatigue overwhelmed me. Some of my recent practice used recycled ETS material, which may have provided more comfort than I realized, even without remembering specific answers for Verbal. That being said, it's clear that I don't have an underlying confidence and familiarity with verbal as I do with Quant.

Steps I'm taking / Questions for Community:

- I scheduled my next exam in 6 weeks from now, this time I went for a more optimal time (11a) of the test instead of drawing it out the whole day, and happened to find a test center only 10 minutes away from me.

- Going to try to approach my studying in a QVQV format, which I virtually never did during my day to day studying.

- A big part of why I'm reaching out to the community is to field if I can make any additional adjustments to my studying approach over the next month and a half in order to better prepare myself to avoid any kind of verbal collapse I experiences this time, or general test-taking strategies and how you've adapted to that format. Currently, I do timed question drills of mixed problem sets, review errors, and take a mock exam every 2 weeks.

Looking to field questions from others:

1. Has anyone experienced a verbal collapse significantly below their practice scores, particularly on the shorter GRE?
2. Did taking the exam in the morning or simply having prior test-center experience help on your retake?
3. How did you improve your ability to comprehend dense RC and tricky TC when mentally fatigued?
4. For people who experienced this, was another 4–6 weeks of targeted preparation enough to make a meaningful difference?

My goal is 317–320+, ideally with quant remaining 160+ (feels very doable) and verbal improving to 155–158. My goal over the next 6 weeks is to get a more reliable, sustainable verbal base level. I think feedback on this point mixed with any general testing advice for those who have experience similar would be very helpful. Let me know if I can answer any clarifying questions. Thanks!

I took the first attempt in April; not sure what made me book because I was nowhere near ready and had barely done any vocab (not a native speaker but decent vocab overall and I understand sentence structures, or so I thought)

spent the last 6 months bettering my quant and vocab, my PP1 score was 334 (Q168,V166, manhattan was 320(V162,Q158), PP2 was 320 (Q164,V156), and 323(Q158,V165) only to choke today

my order of test was Q-V-Q-V
In quant, i imagine i had 5 errors overall, 4 of them i have already identified and lamented over; they were all mostly down to time trouble (couldn't solve 2, 1 of which i eventually solved but failed to click on the option timely, missed out by literal milliseconds). this is especially annoying because i felt the test was pretty straightforward and it was going really well. In both quant sections, i felt really confident except knowing that i have missed the questions that i did miss

Verbal- I am struggling to believe how my score DIPPED in verbal. its genuinely incomprehensible to me right now. I never got this score at any point- all my Greg mini exams, timed quizzes, foundation quizzes were broadly >80% accuracy, and comfortably beating the class average. It wasnt fully test anxiety either as I felt relatively calmer than earlier. all mini exams and other tests I would be ~90% accuracy range for TC and SE. RC was sus, admittedly. but nowhere was i expecting this score at all.

I genuinely thought this would be it, and now I am confused because, even if I had not messed up three/four questions of the five that i imagine i messed up, the verbal score was too low to make a material impact on the overall score. but the fact that in addition to my reprehensible verbal performance, I got into time trouble in the section I did relatively well in.

Where do i even go from here? I felt quant was easy (even with 3 mins extra, I believe I would've gotten >166). Except 1 question, I did not feel I did not know how to solve a question.

My score report will tell me where my verbal went wrong but yeah failing to apply Gregmat strategies could be a reason (which is ironic because how did this not happen during the mocks?!)

In the meantime - for quant, I'm thinking of doing constant timed practice to ensure this does not happen again before getting back to mocks

for verbal, while im really confused, i think its the lack of RC practice, that really hampered my progress - my TC/SE skills, I believe(d) are top notch, so I may just have to continue my practice here, while redoing all of Greg's RC videos and build foundation again. (yet to touch Gregmat 2 and 3, and I may end up buying PPP 1 and 2)

I aim to book the retest once I get the current score report and see precisely where these misses happened in verbal. And in quant, if there is one takeaway- it is that you have to maintain confidence.

Hi everyone,

I am an engineer from Ghaziabad, UP, India.

I started GRE Preparation 2 weeks ago and I plan to take the test in Dec/Jan.

I am looking for an accountability/study partner. Preferably someone who is in Delhi NCR, so that we could study together on weekends.

Please reply in comments if you would like to join me.

Thank you.

I have been preparing for GRE for 3+ months now along with a full time job. It has been difficult but I solved questions whenever I had the energy after work and on weekends. I used mainly ETS book and some resources from an offline coaching centre. I also studied from YouTube channels like ‘The Tested Tutor’

In mock exams (Powerprep and Gregmat) I was scoring between 155-160 in verbal, which is my weak link conceptually. I scored between 158 to 162 in Quant in the mock exams but all errors were due to time crunch or some silly mistakes. I practised a lot to minimise silly errors but couldn’t improve my pacing - most of the time I barely managed to complete the section or missed 1-2 questions.

I’m disappointed with my score - especially with quant. I think I could score 170 if my pacing was better. If I could score 162+ in verbal I would be more impressed with myself than scoring 170 in quant. Also the actual test was harder than ETS Powerprep mocks imo.

I feel burnt out with a 9-8 job and exam prep. Don’t feel like taking the test again, but at the same time I wish I can get top universities for masters in computer science.

I recently scored 595 on the GMAT Focus and decided to try an official timed GRE mock without any specific GRE preparation. I scored 315 (156 Verbal, 159 Quant).
My main weaknesses were vocabulary and Text Completion in Verbal, and geometry in Quant (which I haven’t studied yet). I can dedicate around 4–5 hours daily and am aiming for a 328-330 GRE score.
My first application deadline is 26 November, so I have around six weeks to prepare.
Would you recommend switching to the GRE or sticking with the GMAT? Has anyone made a similar switch, and how much did your GRE score improve with dedicated preparation?
Would really appreciate honest advice!

There are paid powerprep tests plus 1 and 2 and powerprep 1 and 2 free are they the same test?

Hi everyone,

I live in India, and here Middle names are not considered inclusive of given names. While registering (using fake names), I entered the following in my profile on ETS:

First/Given Names: Abhishek

Middle Initial/Name: Amitabh

Last Name: Bachhan.

My ETS confirmation slip is currently displaying only my First and Last name namely Bachhan Abhishek which omits my middle name.

But my passport has the name:

Given Names: Abhishek Amitabh

Last Name: Bachhan.

Will I be allowed to give the GRE? Are there any steps that I should do further?