How did I score 334 in GRE?

Hello folks,

If you are someone who is aspiring to do a master's or Ph.D. outside abroad after pursuing UG or gaining some work experience then this article is for you. I am Manasi Doshi, currently pursuing PhD at UT Austin. Visit my blog to know more about my journey from NU to UT.

A random pic of UG at Nirma University (2015)

I get a lot of queries regarding GRE preparation — like,

• What should be the right time and timeline to prepare for GRE?
• Will my being from the Vernacular medium affect my score?
• Can I prepare for it without coaching?
• What score is considered a good score?

And lot more...

I would like to take the opportunity to share my thoughts and let this article serve as a basic outline on how to prepare for the GRE exam so that you can target a great score.

If you are in the early stages of preparation, you might be wondering how you can get admitted to a good university. Irrespective of your branch of engineering in your UG, the first step to your application process is taking the GRE exam. As with almost any competitive exam, your aim should be to score as much as you can.

A fair warning before you read ahead: There will be a lot of Dos and don’ts. It will seem very overwhelming. But don’t let it discourage you. It’s just an exam and all of you must have gone through much worse exams (ode to the JEE days :P ).

I have divided this article into 5parts:

1. About GRE
2. How to Prepare for GRE?
3. Timeline to Prepare for GRE
4. Resources
5. Strategies for the fortnight before the exam & the exam day

1. About GRE:

Before I go into the details of how to prepare for GRE, there are some things you need to know about the GRE exam itself.

Unlike GATE, GRE does not test your academic or technical skills at all. It is a test of your quantitative and language skills to ensure that you can successfully understand the course material that you will learn in your grad school.

To test these skills, the GRE exam has three main sections:

1) Analytical Writing: Analysis of an Issue and Analysis of an Argument

2) Quant Section: Discrete Quant, Quantitative Comparisons, Data Interpretations

3) Verbal Section: Text Completion, Sentence Equivalence, Reading Comprehension

In addition to the two writing prompts, your GRE exam will consist of five alternating quant and verbal sections (Q-V-Q-V-Q or V-Q-V-Q-V). Of these 5 sections, only four sections will contribute to your score. One section which will not be graded which is referred to as the dummy section. You don’t know which is the dummy section. If you get three Quant sections, the dummy will be one of the last two quant sections and similarly for Verbal sections.

Adaptive difficulty:

One important thing to remember is that GRE is section adaptive. The exam adapts to your ability level. Your performance on the first scored Verbal section will determine the difficulty level of your second scored Verbal section, and your performance on the first scored Quant section will determine the difficulty level of your second scored Quant section. Because of this, scores are not determined solely by the number of correct answers. Your overall score will reflect a weighting for difficulty. If you get an easy question wrong in your first graded section, your next section will have less difficult questions and you will score less.

No negative marking:

You can skip questions but you should NOT do that. Never skip a question. Choose whatever you think is right. If you are running out of time and there are a bunch of questions left, just answer randomly but don’t leave it blank. You also have an option to mark and review your answers before submitting them so long as you stay within the section-time limit.

2. How to Prepare for GRE?

Based on what you have read so far, you must have realized one thing: no matter what, in order to get a great score, you need to get the maximum possible questions correct. So how do we do that? How do we prepare for GRE?

Quant Section:

• Since this article is targeted to the engineering students, I assume that you have great quantitative skills. GRE only covers maths concepts till the 10th -11th standard.
• All you need to do is practice as much as you can. Your quant prep should focus on trying to get 100% accuracy within the time-limit.
• Concentrate on topics that you’re prone to making mistakes.
• For me that was inequalities, probability and P&C. My preferred resources for quant practice were the ETS Official guide and Manhattan 5Lbs book.

How much Quant score is acceptable?

• If you’re applying for any Engineering or core sciences course, your quant score will be really important. You should aim to get at least 165 out of 170 in Quant. This is NOT difficult.

Best resources to prepare for Quant

• The best place to start is the ETS Official Guide. Make a plan to solve ALL the questions from it. Make a list of topics and all the formulae within those topics especially for things like sum of arithmetic and geometric progressions. This will be helpful when you are revising.

Verbal Section:

• This is the section that usually messes up our score. Scoring in the verbal section will need a lot of planning and effort. Almost none of us begin with a ‘GRE level’ vocabulary. So that should be your starting point.
• I have heard a lot of students say that you can score 160+ only if you have a great vocabulary to start with or only if you are an ‘English medium’ student. That is definitely not true. It doesn’t matter where you start, only where you end.
• Do you need an exceptional vocabulary for this? Yes. Can you improve your vocabulary to reach this level in a few months? Also yes.

You should be learning and memorizing at least 20-25 new words every single day. This way, if you have approximately 4 months before you are taking the GRE exam, you can learn over 3000 new words. Sound easy? The challenge will be to remember these words at least until you are done with GRE.

For this, there are various tricks that might be helpful for some people. I’ll just list down some ways that helped me.

1. Starting with a Don’t. Don’t try to memorize words using a dictionary. That’s too much and not really practical. GRE word-lists are your friends.
2. I made lists of words with the same word root or word base.

e.g. Root Vor means ‘to eat greedily’ (herbivore, carnivore, omnivore, voracious). You probably know the first three words. But this way, when you see voracious, you know that it must mean consuming (eating) something a lot greedily (voracious eater/voracious reader). Although you can find such lists online, if you make a list on your own, it will be more targeted for you.

3. I made another list of words that are synonyms or close enough to be synonyms.

e.g. Words that mean ‘expert or skilled’ or have very similar meanings (adept, virtuoso, adroit, dexterous, deft, maestro, veteran, doyen, maven). This was extremely helpful in sentence equivalence since you already remember these as synonyms.

4. In the above list, also add antonyms.

e.g. Right after the above example, I would ideally have words that mean ‘unskilled’ (inept, amateur, incompetent, bungling, blundering, clumpsy). This is helpful for text completion.

5. To remember words, try to relate them to something or someone with similar characteristics.

E.g. I memorized the word flout (to openly disregard a rule or law) by mentally attaching the word to a classmate who was always late to class. Every time I saw him, I remembered flout.

6. Read newspaper editorials and then summarize them in your own words as that will help you with reading comprehension. RC passages are usually taken from newspaper editorials or books. Read books with a lot of Greek or Latin references (even YA books like Percy Jackson or Harry Potter). My recommendation for books with Greek/Latin references stems from the fact that English is derived heavily from these languages. You will learn a lot of word roots without realizing it.

7. WRITE and Quiz. Writing helps memorize faster than reading. Also, ask a friend to do a verbal quiz for you. Give them your 25 words of the day and they can ask you the meanings in random order. Random ordering is important because sometimes we remember the meaning in sequence but have not associated it with the word.

Identifying the weakness

• These tips are for improving vocabulary. Once you have a better vocabulary, you need to start practicing. A lot. Again, just like with quant practice, identify your weaknesses.
• Mines were 3 blank text completions and RCs with paragraphs related to arts and humanities. Keep practicing and you will get better.

How much Verbal score is acceptable?

• Many universities have a verbal score/percentile cut-off which is not as high as the quant cut-off.
• If you’re applying for any Engineering or core sciences course, you should aim to get at least 155 out of 170 in Verbal. This is the minimum verbal score you will need to get 325 provided that you score 170 in quant.

Best resources to prepare for Verbal

• My favorite resources for vocab are Norman Lewis, Barron’s wordlist, Magoosh app, Manhattan 5lbs, high-frequency words GRE (Barrons, just Google it).
• If you are starting your GRE prep early (have more than one semester before the exam), read as much as you can; especially editorials in newspapers and books written by non-Indian authors.

AWA SECTION:

• The GRE essay section, also known as the GRE Analytical Writing Assessment (AWA), actually comprises of two parts: the ‘Issue’ essay and the ‘Argument’ essay. You are allotted 30 minutes for each essay. Both test your ability to write a cogent thesis statement that you must defend over the course of several paragraphs.
• The ETS official website has a comprehensive list of topics for both issue and argument. Go through it to get an idea of what the prompts look like. Once you feel confident, practice writing (typing) these just like you would practice Quant/Verbal.
• Practice in notepad or in word with spell-check turned off since your points get deducted for incorrect word usage, spelling mistakes and typos.
• Try to get in ATLEAST 400 words. Try to use a couple of words from your GRE high-frequency word lists but DON’T use words that you don’t know the meaning of.
• You should have good content with as few typing mistakes as possible. While practicing, type one issue, and follow it up with an argument. That will mimic your GRE conditions since you have to type two essays back to back in 30 minutes each.
• You can also look for sample AWA essays on the internet but DON’T memorize off the internet and repeat them in your AWA.

No need to write cliche quotes although a lot of online resources will tell you to.

• If you give examples, try not to give local examples. Your human reviewer probably knows very little about your favorite cricket player or actor. For issue: Before you start typing, spend a couple of minutes and think about what side you want to take. They are not judging you for your moral stance, they’re only checking your English writing skills. If you can write more points for something even if it is against your moral opinion, take the other view.

How much AWA score is acceptable?

• For engineering and sciences, AWA scores are less important than the GRE score as long as you have a minimum score to cross the requirements.
• AWA is the first section of your GRE. If you think you did not do as well as you would like, don’t worry. It should not stress you out and affect your quant and verbal score. After all, GRE is like an endurance test. Overall performance is required instead of a sectional.
• But, don’t completely ignore this section. Most universities require a minimum score of 3.0 on AWA for admission but I have seen a minimum requirement of 4.0 or more for highly competitive programs (CS,ME,etc.) at top 25 unis. Some universities publish the average score of admitted students for previous years and it is usually 4.5+ in top 15 universities.

3. Timeline to Prepare for GRE:

• The ideal time to officially begin GRE prep is 5th semester (in UG)and take the GRE exam is your 6th semester. This way, you have time to retake since ETS test centres are fully booked well in advance. This timeline is if you want to pursue higher education right after BTech.
• If you are in a semester earlier than 5th semester, Great! You have more time to read and work on your vocabulary.
• If you are in the middle of the 7th semester or later, my suggestion would be to target the next cycle.

4. Resources:

Although I mentioned a couple of my favorites earlier, this is a more comprehensive list.

• Vocabulary building: Word Power Made Easy by Norman-Lewis, Magoosh Free App, Barron’s high-frequency list, word list in Manhattan 5Lbs
• Quant practice: ETS Official Guide, ETS Math Guide, Manhattan 5Lbs
• Verbal practice: ETS Official Guide, ETS Verbal Guide, Manhattan 5Lbs, Kaplan, wherever you can find GRE RCs.
• Full-Length Tests:
  - ETS Powerprep (2 tests, free)
  - Manhattan (1 free, great for verbal practice. others are paid.)
  - Kaplan (1 free, marginally more difficult than actual GRE in my opinion, others are paid)
  - McGraw Hill (1 free).
• There are other free full-length tests online that may or may not emulate the actual GRE.
• Do full-length tests with AWA. Get the AWAs evaluated by someone.

5. Strategies for the fortnight before the exam & the exam day:

• Try to pick a date at least two weeks in advance or more since Ahmedabad ETS center dates can be hard to book later.
• Once you have picked your date, start full-length tests, at least 2 weeks before your test.
• Start with ETS1. I believe it was easier than my actual GRE.
• If you buy an exam set, try to mix them up. Don’t do 5 Manhattan papers in a row.
• Learn from your mistakes. You will get an idea what your weak points are. Practice those. End with ETS2. It is a little on the more difficult side.
• Try to take these at approximately the same time as your GRE time if possible. That will set you up in a routine especially if it is earlier than your normal waking-up time (i.e Avoid taking the test in the late evening if your test is in the morning. Otherwise it may lead to chaos on the exam day).
• These full-length tests will also build your stamina. GRE is a marathon exam with 4+ hours of total time. You will be mentally exhausted by just staring at your screen unless you practice.
• Go through your quant formula and wordlists as frequently as you can.

The D-Day

• On the day of the GRE, eat something before you go and carry a light sweater or jacket. The only thing I remember from my actual GRE exam is that I was freezing throughout the exam. These may sound like advice from your mom but you definitely don’t want to faint in the middle of the exam. :D

Try to not spend more than 2–3 minutes on one question. If you are stuck, go ahead.

• Manage your time but don’t be over-cautious about it. Some questions will take a couple of seconds and some will take a couple of minutes.
• You don’t want to waste time on one question and then not complete the last 5 questions. At any point, if you think you’re messing up, don’t worry. Don’t let it affect the remaining questions.

Other than that, good luck! Hope we saw more people with 325+ scores from Nirma.

Hope this article helped you. In case you want me to cover any more areas, do post in the comment section.