Hi everyone, I plan to retake GRE in another 2 weeks after getting a lousy score of 157V 148Q AWA of 4. Can esteemed forumers give some advice on areas I can improve?
I am hoping to score 160 for V and Q, even better if can improve AWA to at least 4.5
Quant
I suck big time at quant and I pin it to a weak foundation and terrible skill at deduction. I am re-studying my GRE notes (have already completed swift prep videos and did all exercises under each swift prep) and recently when I re-doed the power pack exercise for quant reasoning, I got about 80% plus right for arithmetic and algebra. I plan to re-watch the quant strategy section and redo all quant exercises in the power pack - did not do this previously. Anything else I should do to tackle my weaknesses? How can I improve deduction?
Verbal
My obvious weakness is reading comprehension. I plan to do more reading comprehension questions from the Big Book rather than power prep since Gregmat has a walkthrough on Bigbook and that may help me to understand my weaknesses better. Likely do 3 passages per day for the next two weeks. For some reason, my short passage sucks bigger time than long passage even though I always thought the long passage is my bane. Nevertheless, I have difficulty practising recognising functions and I think my rephrasing of short para is still fairly long - I try to make it less than 7 words per sentence. I think my biggest issue is I still read content more than exercise skills from Gregmat. How to avoid doing this?
Will do verbal mountain (complete the 34 groups every 3-4 days until exam day which means I will complete them 3 times. I feel my vocab is fairly strong given my SE is nearly perfect, but will still practice them so that I wonât take them for granted. My TC is good but not great - for every 3 RC passages I do, I plan to do 1 set of 7 TC.
Any kind help? Appreciate insights from anyone Also, after I am done with the exercises of the official GRE quant reasoning, what other materials should I use to practice - should I practice as much as I could with LB5 or gregmatâs quant problems? I plan to finish all of it by this weekend and I am close to halfway now. In my last prep, I didnât practice much quant except the exercises after each prep swiftâs lessons.
Which series is this? So far, I am trying to do all the power prep exercises and then go through gregâs strategy video again while practicing 5lbs. I didnât have sufficient time to do this the last round. So over the next 2 weeks, I plan to do more. So far on the official quant reasoning, I get about 2/3 wrongs for the arithmetic, algebra and geometry sets (each set about 13 - 19 questions) but I do not want to be lured into a false sense of security. So Plan to keep grinding while be more intentional at internalising the model answers and practicing the skills from gregâs strategy.
Here is the link: Must See Videos - GregMat Course - GregMat
And I was curious to know about the length of RC Long Passages. Were they time consuming in terms of length or in terms of the context (i.e . whether the content was written in a convoluted manner) ?
Many thanks! They have a lot more short passages. I think long passages from the big book are gone. The passages are convoluted - think they are comparable to Big Book and the Power Pack. But I think I had 2 critical thinking questions.
New GRE - those long passages are not super long compared to the old GRE from the big book. I would say the âlongâ GRE is comparable to the shorter one from the old book.
Iâm sorry you had a rough day, it really sucks when youâve worked hard for something and it doesnât go the way you want. I hope youâre feeling a bit better now that itâs been a few days.
Firstly, donât label this a âlousyâ score. The score indicates you might be lacking in your Quant Foundation and Verbal Strategy. Thatâs it. Donât attach your opinion to this.
This target score is fine, however youâre hoping for a 10 point increase in only 2 weeks. Unless you happened to be unlucky and had a really bad day in your current test, this is very tough to achieve and unlikely (but prove me wrong if you want!). I would however seriously consider pushing back your retake.
To get started with your prep, can you please watch the following videos?
These videos are to guide you on how you should plan out your retake study plan. After you watch those, can you please let us know what you learned from them?
First thing first, Ganesh, I would like to thank you for your encouragement including all the past advice about some of the quant problems that I encountered. I really appreciate it and thank you for doing what you are doing.
The GRE experience was a little frustrating for me because I have spent so much effort practising questions from Big Book and Prep Swift, and been actively practising along with the videos, but the actual result is rather dismal and discouraging. Iâm somewhat desperate because I wanted to make it for this yearâs intake for an MBA before further family planning (married, mid 30s this year) and I have a rather strong application and reference but my GRE score is so bad that I am afraid that it will pull my application down.
I have been working on my quant foundation by mowing down practices from the power pack and Lb5. For the quant reasoning book, I have finished arithmetic, algebra and geometry with about 2 or 3 wrongs per set. This is something I did not attempt in my last prep due to the time factor. Iâm also starting to re-listen to Gregmatâs strategy for quant and verbal (mostly RC bits). I know it may be a bit of an unrealistic ask to attempt an improvement of 10-15 points in just 2 weeks but as mentioned above, I really want to try it or at least get as close as I can to the target score of 160 V and Q.
Hoping you may able to provide pointers and whether what I am doing now is on the right track and any further advice. To be honest, I enjoy learning GRE and has acquired entirely new skills with regards to reading but I am frankly bad in taking standardised test.
I have been revising quant and recently completed all the practices across the 4 quant topics of arithmetic, algebra, geometry and data analysis as well as Verbalâs RC, TC and SE from the official GRE quant and verbal, albeit untimed. These are my performance
Do you think I am on the right track toward achieving 160 for quant and verbal at the very least? I have approximately 10 more days. Plan to keep practicing from ETS official and official quant / verbal reasoning, as well as LB5 to strengthen my math foundation.
Also, can anyone provide some Gregmatâs links on AWA?
Thank you, Ganesh! Sigh, I am clearly still at memorisation stage - just did arithmetic (thereâs a lot of questions!) and I have only scored 29/50. Can I ask at what score would you rate as I have sufficiently out of memorisation stage for a particular chapter? But the arithmetic test helps me to identify the holes. I have clearly forgotten some.
@ganesh_h@Leaderboard Okay just took for data. Data fares slightly better. Plan to take algebra, coordinate geometry and geometry over the weekend. Next Thursday is my D-Day round 2 with GRE. So far:
Arithmetic = 29/50 (I have revised all the wrong answers and re watch the relevant prep swift videos + keep grinding from lb5)
Data = 26/30 (plan to tackle data questions from the big book to continue strengthening this chapter)
Algebra - tbc
Coordinate geometry - tbc
Geometry tbc
Also been rewatching some selected verbal videos. Recently received 20/25 for Practice Set 1 under the official GRE verbal reasoning albeit untimed.
Arithmetic = 29/50 (I have revised all the wrong answers and re watch the relevant prep swift videos + keep grinding from lb5)
Data = 26/30 (plan to tackle data questions from the big book to continue strengthening this chapter)
Algebra - 27/36
Coordinate geometry - 32/38
Geometry - 34/44
@ganesh@Leaderboard Finally done with the foundation tests. Seems like my weakest is arithmetic. Left 4 more days to retaking. Will be rewatching prep swift on parts where I have gotten wrong and rewatch the quant strategy videos / practice some of it. But for the remaining days, do you think itâs more worth it to practice from GRE big book (tough questions), LB5 (keep grinding) or do the ETS official materials? Will also spend time grinding on graph questions from big book since it usually
have about 3-4 questions per section. Hopefully⌠with these, can at least get to the border of 160
Also, after I am done with the exercises of the official GRE quant reasoning, what other materials should I use to practice - should I practice as much as I could with LB5 or gregmatâs quant problems? I plan to finish all of it by this weekend and I am close to halfway now. In my last prep, I didnât practice much quant except the exercises after each prep swiftâs lessons.
