provides you with a Plan B — what to do if things don’t go so well the first time.
Making the Best Use of Your Time
As soon as you decide to take the GRE, the clock starts ticking. You have only so much time to study and practice, and suddenly the exam is tomorrow morning. The good news: I’ve taken many a student down this road, with great results, and here I’ve distilled the best of the success strategies. The following sections show you how to optimize your study and practice time so you can answer the test questions more efficiently.
Budgeting your time for studying
As an undergrad, you may have mastered the fine art of cramming the night before an exam, but that doesn’t work on the GRE. This test is based on skills, not memorization, and skills take time to develop. It’s like throwing a baseball: You need time to learn, practice, rest, and practice more. Give yourself plenty of time to absorb all the material you need to study. Here’s what I recommend in terms of total time, the amount of that time you spend working through this book, and the amount of time to set aside per day:
Six to twelve weeks of total preparation: Give yourself plenty of time to work through this book, take practice exams, and review areas where you need extra preparation. Six to eight weeks works well for most people, but more time is generally better. At 12 weeks, you can do extremely well, but after 12 weeks, most people get burned out or lose interest, and they forget things they learned early on.
Three to four weeks on this book: Working through this book takes about three weeks, not including the practice tests. The practice tests should each take hours (no essays) or hours (with essays), plus another hour or two to review the answer explanations.
One to three hours per day, five or six days per week: Pace yourself. I’ve seen too many students burn themselves out from trying to master the whole test in three days. Your brain needs time to process all this new information and be ready to absorb more.
This book provides broad coverage of everything you’re likely to encounter on the test, but if taking the practice tests reveals weaknesses in certain areas, you may need to consult additional resources to improve your understanding and skills.
Budgeting your time for practice
Just because you know a subject well doesn’t mean you can ace it on the GRE. Test-taking requires a completely separate skill set. Start taking practice tests at least two weeks prior to your scheduled GRE so you have time to hone your skills, learn from your mistakes, and strengthen your weak areas. I once had a group of financial advisors struggle with the math portion. When I asked about this, they told me that they use Excel for everything!
In addition to working the practice tests in this book, I recommend working the free computer-based practice tests that Educational Testing Service (ETS) provides at www.ets.org. See Chapter 3 for details.
Taking control: Time management tips
Taking the GRE is a little like playing Beat the Clock. The computer provides you with an on-screen timer for each section. Your goal is to answer as many questions correctly as quickly as possible before the clock reaches 0:00. You have the option of hiding this timer, but I don’t recommend that. Instead, make the timer familiar and comfortable (or rather, less uncomfortable) by using a stopwatch while doing homework and practice tests. Practicing with a stopwatch is part of preparing for the test-taking experience.
Don’t obsess over giving each question a specific number of seconds, but do know when to give up and come back to a question later. A rule of thumb is about a minute per question. As long as you haven’t exited the section, you can return to any questions in that section. Simply call up the Review Screen by clicking Review, click the question you want to return to, and then click Go to Question. You can mark a question for review so it’s flagged on the Review Screen, or you can write the question number down on your scratch paper. Just keep in mind that while you’re on the Review Screen, the clock still ticks. (See Chapter 3 for more about the computer version of the test.)
Plan B: Repeating the Test
Upon completing the exam, you have the option of accepting and seeing your scores immediately or canceling the results if you think you did poorly. If you cancel the results, you can always retake the test. Most schools consider only your highest exam score, or you can choose to send only that highest score (see the ScoreSelect discussion in Chapter 1), so only cancel if you really think something went south on test day that isn’t normal for you.
If you cancel a score and later have second thoughts about that cancellation, you can reinstate the canceled score up to 60 days after the test date. As of this writing, the service costs $50, and reinstatement takes up to two weeks.
If you proceed with your exam score and it isn’t so hot, don’t fret: Most test-takers who repeat the exam tend to do much better the second time. It’s as if the best way to prepare is by taking the actual GRE. Of course, you want to avoid having to do this, but if the first round doesn’t go so well, it’s okay, and it happens.
If you think you underperformed on the GRE, consider the following when deciding whether to retake it and when preparing to retake the exam:
What went wrong here? If you made mistakes because of a lack of familiarity with either the test format (you didn’t understand what to do when faced with a Quantitative Comparison question) or substance (you didn’t know the vocabulary or the geometry), these are easy gaps to close, and you’re a good candidate for doing better the second time.The practice tests are designed to help you address these issues ahead of time: If you know what you did wrong, you can mend your ways and improve your score.After taking the actual GRE, you don’t get to review the correct
