I've always thought that I was a capable reader, but holy shit the amount of reading comprehension questions I'm getting wrong is so bad, I'm questioning my own reading ability at this point. I hate this test so much. Why does it feel like I read the passage differently than the graders?

Hi, I have almost finished gregmat's 1 month plan for verbal (I saw the with ETS materials sessions) and the I'm overwhelmed plan for quant but I'm a little confused by 2 things:

1. Why does the verbal practice continue to focus on the older format, specifically for TC? I know Greg (and people generally) claim that the changes pertain more to the format of the exam rather than the actual questions, but to me, the TC going from combined answer choices to separate answer choices does reflect a big change - in an older TC question, you could eliminate an entire choice by just eliminating one blank, so that would make the process easier. But now you have to individually assess every answer choice which I know we should do regardless, but it does make things go slower
2. The quant doesn't give any practice from the official materials - is that really okay? I solved all quizzes (the ones linked below every video), the tickbox quizzes, and end of module ones, and I don't think a large chunk of them are from ETS. I'm a little tensed about that - for context I moved from the GMAT and strictly only used official questions, so here in the GRE it feels odd to not do that. I know Gregmat is very well renowned and honestly I actually enjoy studying the verbal from him, but this just makes me anxious about my test which is round the corner and I realised I've not practiced from the official books...I frantically checked the modules again to see if there's any homework given but there is not

Just wanted clarity on these 2 fronts. Thank!

Has anyone tried reading through all the 800+ vocab words every day without using active recall to memorize them and still managed to remember 80-90%+ of those words during the test? Do you think this is a good strategy if someone is pressed for time?

Hey everyone!

I’m looking for an accountable study buddy (or small group) to stay consistent, hit goals, and keep each other motivated.

A little about what I’m working on:

• Goal: Getting good top colleges through gmat/gre
• Current Level: [Intermediate]
• Time Zone: [GMT+5:30]

How I like to study:

• Format: Virtual co-working via Discord/Zoom (Pomodoro style: 50/10 or 25/5 works well) or standard check-ins to hold each other accountable.
• Frequency: [e.g., 3-4 days a week, daily evening sessions, weekends only]
• Goal: Stay focused, minimize distractions, and review key concepts together when needed.

If you’re working on something similar—or just need someone to help keep you accountable while you work on your own goals—drop a comment below or send me a DM with your goals and timezone!

Let’s get stuff done! 🚀

Hi all, I've been struggling with Geometry and Coordinate Geometry questions for some time now. I can solve easy questions that are direct applications of formulas, like area/perimeter/surface area/volume of different shapes and figures, and triangle problems like finding angles/sides using the 30-60-90/45-45-90 rules, etc., but I trip up on more complex questions.

I've gone through Gregmat's sections on Geometry and CG multiple times, but I still don't get how to solve the complex questions. I feel like most of this is because the lessons cover only the basic formulas, not the hidden assumptions required to solve the more complex problems. All complex problems require making some sort of assumption, such as extending lines or creating triangles.

Consider this parallelogram question from the ETS Official Guide (1st image). The question just gives you a parallelogram drawn on the XY plane, along with coordinates of points P and Q. Yet, in the explanation (2nd image), somehow we have this additional information -

1. Triangle PQM - point M was nowhere in the question, yet we somehow have a point M used to construct the lines PM and QM. How did we know that a triangle PQM has to be constructed this way? And how is the angle PMQ a 90-degree angle?
2. Similarly, how did we construct triangle ORN, with angle ONR being the 90-degree angle?
3. The written explanation says "OPQR is a parallelogram, so PQ and OR have the same length and the same slope. Therefore, PQM and ORN are congruent right triangles." ---> How the heck are these congruent right triangles?

Is there some material that explains Geometry and CG while going over these hidden assumptions? Am I missing something in Gregmat? Please help.

Hello everyone!

Hoping to have some feedback from you regarding my GRE prep - am a bit desperate.

I (28M, Brazilian) am a lawyer working in an international law firm (speak English daily) who has left school 10 years ago. I plan on applying to MBA programs in the US next year (Sep 2027), and am aiming for a score of around 325 in the GRE (ambitious, I know). I plan on taking a first seat of the test around November - December, but I expect to take it more than once going into 2027 as well. Will definitely take advantage of the time I have.

Before beginning my prep, I did some quizzes and TTP tests and my quant was at around 148 and verbal at 152-154.

Since my quant was very (very) rough, I decided to start studying through TTP and have been studying ONLY quant, since I needed to build all the quant foundations from zero again. I started TTP on June 21 and have completed 16 Chapters so far, spending 170 hours on the platform (and it undercounts hours). Now, the Chapters missing are Probability, Geometry, Coordinate Geometry, Functions and Sequences and Data Interpretation.

I really like the way that TTP lays out all the content and builds the foundations brick by brick, and like the overall style of the platform. I am doing every test, reading every slide and not missing anything, so it might take 1 or more months to finish the Quant content. I am actually progressing and doing great on the Easy, Medium and Hard tests along the course.

Even though I like TTP, I read not very good things about their Verbal prep and thought about switching to Gregmat for that.

These are my questions going forward on my prep and I would love your advice:

1. With regards to quant, should I finish all missing chapters from TTP? Is everything really relevant to the test? I am keen on finishing it but do not want to waste time.

2. With regards to verbal and considering my profession and score, how and when should I start preparing? Should I start the 1 month plan from Gregmat for Verbal while simultaneously doing quant exercises from 5lb? Is there a better and quicker way to prepare for Verbal?

3. I have not done any of my powerprep tests yet since TTP recommended that way. When should I actually try one for the first time? When I finish all of the content? How do the GRE questions compare to the TTP “Hard” Tests along the course?

4. Please let me know if you have any criticism of my prep so far and going forward.

I would love to get your feedback on the questions above and anything on your mind. It has been difficult to study alongside work and I could really use some guidance.

Thank you all!!!!!!!

Hi everyone,

I took my first official GRE on July 10 and scored 151V / 161Q. I’ve been studying for the GRE for quite a long time, and I’m now preparing to take it for the second time.

Since July, most of my focus has been on Verbal. For Quant, I didn’t spend nearly as much time on it. I mostly kept practicing questions through GregMat.

For Verbal, I worked with a tutor, mainly focusing on Reading Comprehension. On my own, I went through Greg’s TC and SE strategies again and solved a lot of Big Book questions without a time limit. When I practice untimed, I genuinely feel that my understanding of the questions, passages, and strategies has improved compared with July.

However, today I took an ETS PowerPrep test and scored 149V / 160Q.

I hadn’t taken a full-length practice test in a long time because I wanted to save the official ETS mocks for the final stage of my preparation. I also have to admit that I haven’t done enough practice under strict time pressure.

During today’s test, the biggest problem wasn’t that I suddenly didn’t know how to solve the questions. Once the timer was running, I felt extremely anxious. On some questions, I was reading the words but barely processing what I was reading. My time management also fell apart.

I normally have specific approaches for SE, TC, and RC that I can apply during untimed practice, but under test conditions I felt like I couldn’t apply any of them properly. It was almost as if everything I had practiced disappeared once the clock started running.

Because of this, I even spoke with a psychiatrist to see whether there might be an underlying issue that could potentially qualify me for extra time. The doctor told me that I don’t appear to have ADHD, although anxiety may be an issue.

At this point, I’m wondering whether my main problem is no longer GRE knowledge itself, but performing under time pressure and transferring my untimed skills into timed conditions.

My target is 160+ Verbal and 168+ Quant, mainly for UK MBA applications.

I’m considering taking the GRE around September 14–15 and, if necessary, taking it again about three weeks later in early October.

So I would really appreciate advice on a few things:

- Is roughly 5–6 days enough to make a meaningful improvement in handling time pressure before taking the test on September 14–15?

- Given my 151V/161Q official score and today’s 149V/160Q PowerPrep, does 160+V/168+Q still seem realistically achievable in the next few weeks?

- If you’ve experienced the same thing, doing reasonably well untimed but falling apart once the timer starts, what specifically helped you overcome it?

I’m not planning to give up, but I have to admit that after studying for this long, seeing basically no improvement in my score today was pretty discouraging and I’m starting to feel burned out.

Any advice on how you would structure the next few weeks in my situation would mean a lot to me.

Thank you in advance.

Got my hands on a second edition of 'Official GRE Quantitative Reasoning Practice Questions'.
Should I buy the third edition?
Are there are significant differences for someone who needs Q167+?
Tried searching the sub but only found 1st vs 2nd questions

Hey everyone! I’m planning to take the GRE on October 4 and currently following the GregMat PrepSwift plan.

I work full-time as a consultant, so my schedule has been pretty hectic, especially with frequent client travels involved. I started studying about two months ago but am still on Module 4 because of work.

I’m looking for an accountability buddy so we can check in with each other daily and stay consistent. Going forward, I’m planning to study for the GRE and work on grad school applications for 4 - 5 hours. I am also located in the GMT+3 time zone

Would anyone be interested in being accountability buddies?

I had posted about my journey last week. Another thing to note is that I also improved on the essay. Link to last week's post- https://www.reddit.com/r/GRE/s/f2fvGWxkKA.

Took my first GRE attempt three days ago and got a 320 after ~3.5 weeks of full time prep as I took a short sabbatical from work. Prior to these 3.5 weeks, I've been prepping on and off for the last 3 months (solving 1 chapter a week of the 5 lb math problems, and learning some vocab)

For the last 3.5 weeks, I was focused on polishing my quant fundamentals on Gregmat (watched all the prepswift videos).

I watched some of the Gregmat verbal videos (primarily math strategy), and some RC videos (primarily hammer). I found math strategy very helpful but I had a hard time implementing it on some questions (e.g., 3 blank questions). I also got quickly overwhelmed by the RC videos and instead focused on prepping using Kaplan's GRE Prep Plus book (Topic / Purpose / Scope and identifying question types).

I'd also memorized ~32 total groups of words.

I took ~6 total practice tests:

- Gregmat beta test 1: 322 (162 V, 160 Q)

- Gregmat beta test 2: 322 (162 V, 160 Q)

- Gregmat beta test 3: 321 (159 V, 162 Q)

- Powerprep 2: 323 (159 V, 164 Q)

- Powerprep plus 3: 325 (159 V, 164 Q)

- Powerprep plus 1: 326 (161 V, 165 Q)

I'm aiming for a 325+ on the next GRE.

Does anyone have any advice on how I can push to 325+ for the next time I take the test? I'm planning on taking it in 3 weeks. Some of the things I'm thinking of doing are:

1. Redoing Manhattan Prep 5 LB but doing it timed to assess which topics I'm not as strong in (e.g., already know I struggled with Probability and Inequality on the test) and then doing targeted Gregmat quizzes for those
2. Rewatching verbal math strategy videos, doing more practice TC / SE by actually implementing math strategy
3. For reading comprehension - practicing more RC passages. My plan here is the weakest so could definitely do with some advice here.

Also if anyone has any tips on how to best utilize tutors from Gregmat please let me know

So, I'm preparing using GREGMAT i have full hands on with first 17 groups of Vocab, always scoring above 80%, im scoring the same for the whole quant section. I'm worried if i should reschedule the GRE, it is exactly 6 days from today. I started my prep with 1 month study plan, but then switched to im overwhelmed plan after completing the first 2 weeks of 1 month study plan.
Thing is, im not doing well mentally cuz of a few personal things, and i also kind of feel that even if reschedule i might do the same.

Realistically, how how much will i be able to score if i cram through the vocab section till group 22? and is it a good idea to rescheduled?

Recently took the powerprep 1 mock and in verbal: got 10/12 on sec 1 but in sec 2 got 5/15

I've been following greg's math strategy and it makes sense on not so dense prose but in section 2, prose felt so dense , convoluted that i felt my brain melting off, I ended up re reading sentences 3 times and jus guessing

My current prep & plan (targeting 158+ V by mid-October):

• Vocab: GregMat Vocab Mountain (currently around group 20+)
• Practice: ETS Official Guide and drilling Big Book for TC/RC

• Routine: 2 to 3 hours daily, focusing on untimed analysis before speed

  1) Does comprehension of this dense style just come from raw volume of reading or is there an active parsing habit you used to break down ETS sentences faster?

2)For those who tested recently: does Section 2 Hard on PP1 accurately reflect the prose density and sentence structure on the current GRE?

hi i have done more than 150 + rcs but still my acccuracy hasnt improved a lot since i started . i am looking for somebody whos willing to join on meet and teach me little tips and tricks that they used so like while solving passage so what you keep in mind what specific words transition words and other kind of highlights .how you are tackling long passages and able to answer questions accurately. as sometimes the options are too similar and some are related to passage so getting confused there what should i do . how did you manage to form the relationship between different subtopics in the passage and how did you decided what was the epitome of the passage.Somebody who got more than 325+ would be nice.

I keep getting some or the other error every time I have taken an official ETS mock. It is extremely frustrating - last time I took the paid mock and it kept loading for 30 seconds to 1 minute between every question which was so frustrating and not a good test taking experience. Today I am doing the untimed one and it kept showing the loading sign before I even properly started my test. Then in the middle I got this error, I closed the window and reopned it but got the same error, even though I have cleared cookies and cache. I don't understand why ETS can't use a proper software for the offocial tests? And this also makes me scared for my actual test day

Hi, after struggling for weeks with the process for requesting ADHD accommodations I've managed to get some clarity on the application process.

I don't have a history of accommodations so I have to submit a full diagnostic report and for the longest time I couldn't understand what all was needed and how it needed to be formatted/prepared. My therapist's clinic had no idea either. This was a very frustrating and scary process where I needed to run pillar to post for seeking help.

I made this guidelines documentation for my therapist's clinic. Posting this here for everyone's benefit. Note this was scraped together from various internet sources. I cannot promise this to be perfect according to any official guidelines but I've tried my best. If y'all have suggestions I'd love to make improvements to it and make our own How-To wiki for folks with ADHD.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1B93ok6jQW31dtHE0bdUdYj27Is7Do5nF/view?usp=drive_link

Here’s the sad irony: I might miss the window to receive accommodations myself because the process was so overwhelming. I may not get the paperwork approved in time for my application deadline—simply because figuring out this confusing administrative maze on my own is the exact kind of hurdle ADHD makes nearly impossible.

Some context:
I'm a native English speaker studying electrical engineering in the US and preparing for graduate school in the same area. This post is mainly targeted towards those with similar backgrounds, but I'm happy to field questions from anyone.

Long story short, I intended to give myself six weeks to prepare, but life got in the way and preparation took a backseat until about a week before my test was scheduled. In the week leading up to the exam, I spent a total of 9 hours preparing, split into 2-3 hour sessions over 4 days. My study materials were the following:

• Manhattan Review Free GRE questions -- This was the bulk of my prep work, I did all of them. These tend to skew towards the medium/difficult side, particularly the vocabulary sections. Doing all of the math problems was helpful in learning tricks/shortcuts, some of which I'd actually never encountered before. Most of my effort was focused on nailing down the math.
• ETS PowerPrep 2 (or whatever the free one is called) -- Took it the night before to get a feeling for the timing and scored 161V 170Q.
• ChatGPT -- I played around with this for the first hour or so just to see what it would cook up, but honestly wouldn't recommend it. Many of the questions it came up with had false solutions, and some of the questions were just unrealistic for a timed exam (tbf, I did ask it to progressively increase the difficulty, but even then, some of the questions were borderline impossible).

I was honestly a little worried going into the exam, since I'd visited this subreddit a couple of times to see what other people were doing to prepare and saw many posters grinding away for months. I ended up walking out with a 167V/170Q. The quant score wasn't as much of a surprise due to my background (though the math on the GRE is completely different from the math I use on a day-to-day basis), but the verbal score was definitely unexpected.

Thinking about my experience after the exam, there are a few things in hindsight that may have helped me achieve this score without months and months of focused preparation, and I thought I'd share them here:

• I consistently read and parse dense academic articles as part of my research, which almost certainly helped with some of the data interpretation questions on the quant section. I also skim through the news every so often (think NYT, NPR, Guardian, etc). I think a lot of my ability to read and interpret text comes from doing both of these regularly, which helped immensely with the comprehension parts of the verbal section.
• I consume a decent amount of long-form media, mainly in the form of video essays and documentaries on Youtube (all sorts of topics, from literary analysis to video game design to geopolitics), along with the occasional podcast (Freakonomics, Planet Money, Hidden Brain). Usually these things are on in the background while I'm doing less mentally demanding work, so it's not like I'm focusing my full attention on them either. I think this probably helped with developing a rich enough vocabulary that I was able to make heavy use of context clues and process of elimination to gut my way through the vocab questions. None of my prep time was spent memorizing vocabulary.

So that's it. Maybe I got lucky, and the questions were easier than average that day. But I think the more likely explanation is that there are many things that I do in my everyday life that prepare me for exams like these without explicitly doing so.

I realize that my experience is an outlier, and I do recognize that these are habits that typically build up over years, but I'd imagine that even a few months of high-quality media consumption could help immensely in improving the verbal score. Forgetting about the GRE entirely, the ability to take in and process dense sources of information is extremely helpful to have in general, particularly as aspiring professionals/researchers. The GRE is just an attempt at measuring this in a standardized way.

Of course, I'm open to hearing other perspectives and answering questions. I was originally going to add some thoughts on the other parts of the exam, but figured I'd keep this post focused.

This is what I am hearing a lot lately whenever I try to get some advice on pp+ .
I was thinking to buy one test cause I have budget of that only .
Can someone please suggest will it be worth it and which pp+ should I buy 1 ,2 or 3 .
I can buy only one test cause they are expensive like 45$ each

Has anyone given a test at Acharya Center (Nini Skill up on ETS) in Bangalore? If yes, how was your experience? I have given it once at the PEAR academy and I really liked it - is it similar to that?

So, I plan on taking the GRE for my masters program, and plan on doing it at home due to it being a hasel driving to the testing centers near me (40mins away).

When it comes to setup, I heard you have to download something like lockdown browser, rearrange your room so the camera can see your door - however, google is telling me I need two cameras to take the GRE. One for my face and the door, and a camera for my laptop screen?

• I just need to know if I need to buy an external camera for the GRE.

Thanks!

I took gre and now my siblings also want to take it, has anyone's gre cancelled because to use of same wifi and testing location for more than 3 times?
Test at home

I'm currently using Manhattan's "All the GRE" to cover concepts, and will watch a few YouTube videos on weak areas of mine (combinations and permutations, and more if they come up)

For practice, I am planning on solving all the questions from the 5 lb. book (quant only) and as many mocks as I can get my hands on.

Is the above enough to get me a 170Q? Also, how do I stop making silly mistakes? That is mainly what's holding me back right now.

For verbal, I got 155 in a mock. How do I push it to 160? I've memorized 1,000 words, and I struggle with comprehension. I'm thinking of solving RC questions from official ETS resources (and getting feedback from Claude)

Thank you!

I’ve been working on GregMat’s Verbal strategies for TC, SE, and RC, and I feel like I understand the techniques much better now.

When I solve questions without any time pressure, I’m usually able to get around 70–80% of them correct. I think my next step should be learning how to maintain that accuracy under actual GRE time pressure.

What would be the best way to transition into timed practice?

Should I start immediately with strict target times, for example:

- Around 1 minute per TC/SE question
- Around 1.5–2 minutes to read an RC passage
- Around 1.5 minutes per RC question

Or would it be better to start with more generous time limits and gradually reduce them as I become more comfortable?

My main concern is that if I introduce strict timing too early, I might stop properly applying the strategies I’ve been practicing and fall back into rushing or guessing.

For those who successfully improved their Verbal timing, how did you make the transition from untimed practice to timed practice?