After practicing a bunch of GRE papers I have noticed that I mostly get questions wrong because I don’t have enough time. I almost always end up not being able to attempt the last 3-4 question in the quant section because of this. Does anyone have any tips or strategies on how to improve speed without compromising on accuracy?
I personally had an issue with the DI section. So what I would do is generally complete all the other ones before answering the DI questions. So maybe analyse which type of problems are holding you back and plan accordingly.
Another tip (If you have time) - I chose 20Qs from each of the 24 quant chapters of 5Lb and timed myself for 35mins and solved them. I made an error log for the same like this.
Chapter 1 - 17 on 20 - 1Q missed due to negligent mistake, 1Q did not know the concept, 1Q missed due to time constraint
I logged this for all 24 chapters and visited back the chapters where my score was below 18. I also noted down the concepts which I didn’t know while solving these questions in a cheat sheet. Practice like this helped me pick up pace a lot
Practice solving questions fast from Manhattan 5lb…do it for one whole month…Most GRE questions can be solved in 25 minutes…if you know shortcuts like…Keep the extra 10 minutes to review.
Eg: 20% and then 30% increase of 950 = (1.2)*(1.3)*950…If you follow the traditional approach of first finding 20% and then 30% separately of 950…that’ll kill your time.
Again knowing Pythagorean triplets like 10 of them, prevents you from calculating actual Pythagorean stuff.
Also, I would highly suggest the below series.
Tips and Shortcuts
Adding on the 5lb timed practice suggested by @C.Koushik , The question in 5lb chapters are arranged in increasing order of difficulty so if you do 20 questions from each of the chapters make sure to include the one’s at the end of the chapters as they are the hard ones and not just do the first 20 ones. For eg: if a chapter contains 40 question in total then Question 1-12/13 will easy then the next 12-13 question will be medium and the end ones will be of hard difficulty
Hi Koala thanks for the tip on the Shortcuts series. I only have 7d until test day (but have been studying ~2mo), of the 12 videos are there any you recommend prioritizing? I probably have time to soak in half or 2/3 of the series.
You have more time than I do…They have some beautiful questions…mostly from Manhattan…cut all the discussions, you’ll finish atleast 2 videos within an hour. Start with the ones which you are most weak.
Also, concept revision.
Test Your Quant Concepts
Just watch the first 4 videos. You have 7 days…for 5 days write 20 randomly questions from any book (5lb, Greg’s Solve Quant Problems [keep Easy (2), medium(14), hard (4)]…push yourself to solve the questions in 25 mins…idea is maximize applying with 99% accuracy)…after 25 mins use those 10 mins to check your problems.
Did you write practice tests?
Thank you for the fast reply! I have written practice tests. I got 159Q last time and my goal is to get Q162 or above.
Right now I’m finishing 15 questions in the 35 minutes. It is very difficult to imagine completing 20 questions in 25 minutes. If you are able to do this, a walkthrough video showing your work in the 25 minutes would be SOO helpful for me to see. Of course only if you have time! I got 167 on Verbal so all I can offer some help on that, maybe a mini walkthrough if you by chance need any help there.
Practice more questions! Omg please help me out with CR and Long passages…Those are dreadful! See I am Indian…we have strong bases…not to brag but I come from a good college in India and we have pretty tough entrance exams…ideally most Indians face issues with the normal distribution part because that topic isn’t substantiated by our course curriculum…also we are forced to practice questions without calculator till class 10th…so there are a lot of factors…Most Indians have a very strong Math base…The ones who don’t have or don’t understand take up other fields…Science is still the most coveted subject in India for high school…
I would suggest since u are good with verbal, do the chart questions first… shouldn’t take u more than 5 mins…Also I seriously have 4 days in hand… so cannot do a video…I am so sorry. Also, if you watch Greg’s videos you’ll realize he doesn’t get half of the lingo we Indians use…we are taught very differently from the Western world…Also, my mum is a Math grad…so I have a good foundation to say the least.
Can do that video for you after 14th…that’s my exam date!
No worries about the video. Thanks for all of your guidance so far! Yes I watch all Greg videos and it’s funny how he doesn’t understand the Indian vocabulary as it is different from the Western vocabulary for quants. I’ve watched so many GregMat videos that now even I know the Indian vocabulary even though I grew up in California!!
Yes, I can tell in general Indian’s have a much stronger math base. I’m jealous and believe US primary schools need to change their ways. Even though my verbal base is very strong, my math base was so weak at the start of my studies.
A few things I might suggest for long passages, take with a grain of salt is a) I don’t skip any sentences, I skim the entire thing, every word, going at ~400 wpm b) however, I don’t worry at all about remembering details such as dates and names c) I spend extra time understanding the first paragraph as this is how the author sets up their point and the whole passage d) at the end of passage or sometimes halfway, draw an image on paper OR visualize in your head an image which summarizes the BIG, BIG idea. Even on the harder ones like protein synthesis or historical events, a picture helps to summarize. These 4 helped me a lot. Good luck!!!
I too believe so because some of the questions asked is so amusing…In India people will literally mock if you ask questions like that…not to generalize but if you have a country 1.38 billion people and only a handful of good government colleges. Approximately 2.2mm appear every year for the entrance test and only 30k are screened for good govt. colleges. Hence, entrance exams become very tough. We literally have to sleep like 6-7 hours a day to prepare for the test.
and thank you for the suggestions …appreciate it! The image thing sounds cool.
You guys are getting sleep?
Hehe lol…GRE gives better sleep honestly!