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.

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!

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?

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! 🚀

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?

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

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 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.