All About GRE

Have a dream of studying abroad at top-notch universities? Want to persue research and management in top-10 universities of the world? GRE is the key to your success.

The Graduate Record Examination opens the door for 1,200 business schools around the world and thousands of universities for research and higher studies. A basic GRE exam and Subject exam will test your full grip over a subject. The subject tests include Biochemistry, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Literature, Mathematics, and Psychology. The general GRE exam includes Aptitude, Reasoning and English. Undergraduates can apply for this exam. Around 378 MBA colleges and 464 MS Colleges accept GRE score. The exam is conducted thrice a year in April, September, and October.

The Application fee for GRE General Test is Rs. 13,500 – Rs. 14,500 while for Subject Test is Rs. 10,000 – Rs. 11,000. The GRE score is valid for five years. The admission is purely based on the cut-off declared by colleges. It is conducted in 22 cities. This exam also helps to grab you a scholarship at college.

It is important to understand that the GRE is very different as compared to the other exams we are used to giving, talking from an Indian’s perspective. Blind hard work will not serve any purpose and sometimes will be counterproductive.

ETS (the company that conducts the GRE) wants to convince you that your score is a measure of how good you are at ‘critical thinking’, but in reality it is only a measure of how good you are at giving the GRE. So, fortunately for us, the more you practice in the correct way, the better you become at giving the GRE.

Quality > Quantity always. Please do not spend 10+ hours a day mechanically solving problems and forgetting about them as you move forward. This will cause you to plateau at a certain skill level. The key is small incremental improvements.

The ideal way is a simple 3 step process:

·        Solve problems in small sets, around 20(+5 || -5) questions per set.

·        Check your answers. See the solutions, understand them thoroughly.

·        After checking all, recap the questions you got wrong, why, and what you learnt from them. This is extremely important.

Let’s jump into the schedule now, shall we?

Pre-prep phase (1 week):

What is to be done? Words, Words and more Words.

Spend this week learning the words from the following apps:

·        Barron’s 1100

·        Magoosh Flash Cards (around 1000 words)

·        Manhattan Essential Words (around 500 words)

Vocabulary is essential to understanding the Reading Comprehensions as well as the sentence completions, so please complete this before moving ahead!

Week 1:

Congratulations! The boring part is done. This week, let’s do:

4 Practice Tests

Practice each type of question in isolation. For example, do 20 Text Completions in one set. This will help you to identify weaknesses to work on.

Brush up all the shortcuts and maths formulae that you encounter. (Online Magoosh article exists)

Week 2:

This week, let’s move forward with:

·      6 Practice Tests.

·      Do mixed practice sets now (All types of problems together), to simulate the actual GRE scenario.

·      Strictly time your tests and practice sets. Keep 5 minutes per section as a buffer. Identify which type of questions you are slow at. Work on them.

Week 3:

Buckle up; this is your final lap:

·      8 practice tests.

·      Start reading AWA essays online, as well as general structuring tips. A lot of video material is available online. Practice a few essays if necessary.

·      Revise the Vocabulary words and mathematical formulae.

·      At the end of this schedule, you should be ready to face the GRE. So be confident, sleep well before the paper

The Skills Tested in GRE is:

·      Analytical Writing Assessment (AWA)

·      Quantitative Reasoning

·      Verbal Reasoning

Simple strategies:

Please follow 20 minutes strategy. Prepare seriously for 20 mins and then give a small break. Break depends as you can take a 1 min break to an hour. It solely boils down to you. With this strategy, even if you prepare for 10 times a day (10 x 20 mins = 200 mins = 3 hrs 20 mins); then you would be able to put in 3 hrs and 20 mins of valuable effort. More importantly, you will not have any starting problem as some students struggle to even start.

Further, keep yourself fit by doing meditation, yoga and exercises like walking, running etc to keep yourself fit. Staying fit helps you in enhancing the body & mind and in turn helps in increasing the concentration level.

Have a clear goal for your preparation. Work every day with a plan. Systematic and consistent preparation helps you a lot. More importantly, learn it with passion. If you learn with passion, then you can enjoy studying and not creating self inflicted unwanted stress.

1. GRE Verbal Reasoning: (Two sections) - 20 questions per section- 30 minutes per section

·      The Verbal Reasoning section evaluates a candidate's skills to analyze and draw conclusions, understand and add value to data. Candidates are required to understand and summarize the structure of a text as well.

·      Content information analysis and evaluation

·      Analysis of relationships between different parts of sentences

·      Differentiate between concepts and words and the relationships between them

Preparation Tips for Verbal Reasoning:

Learn new words: Candidates should learn new words regularly. It is the most important GRE preparation tip. Along with learning new words, learn and practice the usage of the words as well. It is always interesting to play with words and their formations. This exercise introduces new words and improves your vocabulary to a great extent as well. Candidates on the look-out for new words may find websites like OALD and Webster to be extremely helpful. Try playing scrabble during the leisure time; it will help in learning new words easily.

Practice Reading Comprehension: Reading Comprehension forms a big part of the GRE paper. Hence, aspirants should practice as many reading comprehensions as possible. It should be treated as Mathematics. The practice of at least two to three reading comprehensions in a day would be helpful for the test takers to fare decent scores in GRE test.

Check Grammar: Another major GRE preparation tip is to practice Grammar extensively. It is not an easy task to learn all the rules of grammar. The simplest way here would be to understand the basic usages and very importantly learn tenses and other particulars of English grammar.

2. GRE Quantitative Reasoning: (Two sections) - 20 questions per section- 35 minutes per section

The quantitative reasoning section evaluates the basic mathematical skills of the test taker. Candidates need to possess knowledge of the standard mathematical concepts and their application in solving problems.

The Quantitative section has two tasks with 20 questions in each and the time allotted to complete each section is 35 minutes.

Preparation Tips for Quantitative Reasoning:

A. Practice elementary mathematics: It is imperative for candidates appearing for GRE to make sure their concepts of elementary mathematics are clear. The main topics in this section include Arithmetic, Algebra, Geometry and Data analysis. However, instead of direct questions relating to the topics, candidates would be asked questions where they need to apply the mathematical concepts. It means the exam checks the confidence of the test taker in the respective topics. So, candidates should ensure that basic concepts are clear before taking up the GRE test.

B. Solve sample paper: One of the effective GRE preparation tips is to solve as many sample papers as possible. Quant is one of the trickier sections of GRE and it is always preferable to be prepared for the kind of expected questions.

C. Plan, Prepare and Practice: This is the only technique that can help candidates ace the Quantitative section of GRE. The more one plans and practices, the more his/her concepts will be cleared.

3. GRE Analytical Writing: (One section with two separately timed tasks)-

Analyze an Issue task (30 mins)

Analyze an Argument (30 mins)

This section measures two important skills of the test-taker firstly, the critical thinking ability and secondly, analytical writing skills. There are two tasks in this section: Analyze an Issue and Analyze an Argument. The issue task requires analyzing an issue and developing opinion around it. In the argument task, the candidates have to analyze an argument and present their position regarding it.

Preparation Tips for Analytical Writing:

A. Read and Analyze: Yes, the trick is simple. Reading is the key to success. Candidates should first read and then analyze the content. They should try forming well-read opinions and try to provide reasons for the framed opinions. An analysis should be done from every point of view with substantiation. There is always a way of directing an argument in a manner that is convincing and that only comes from having knowledge on any given topic.

B. Practice writing: Candidates should choose any topic and start writing on it. They should focus on using better vocabulary for expressing the views and arguments. Candidates are suggested to look up at current topics and brainstorm with a peer group to get more ideas and improving on articulation. Also, prospective test takers should practice citing pertinent examples for their line of argument. Candidates might consider the below mentioned GRE preparation tips while writing:

·        The direction of the argument i.e., for or against

·        Listing all the points for or against the issue.

·        Filtering points based on reason and importance.

·        Dividing argument into well-defined sections to clarify their stand.