How to Prepare for GRE: Tips & Strategies to Crack GRE Exam?

How to Prepare for GRE exam

The Graduate Record Examination is opted for by students who want to pursue a master's degree in top universities abroad. Different universities and colleges have different GRE score requirements for a particular program. Thus, setting a target GRE score is definitely important and rewarding before starting your preparation.

Achieving the best GRE scores will allow you to seek admission to your dream university. So, how to crack GRE exam will definitely be a deciding factor in improving your chances of getting a ticket to the top college of your choice. The vast syllabus of the GRE takes a lot of time to complete. So, keep reading to know the GRE study plan with a step-by-step guide that will help you how to crack GRE exam on the first attempt.

Overview on How to Ace GRE Exam

The GRE test is a popular choice among bachelor's students to study a graduate program at the top universities abroad. The exam is administered by ETS and conducted on a global level once every 21 days. To get into the top colleges, you must have high GRE scores. So, creating a well-planned study plan on how to crack GRE test is the first step toward effective GRE preparation. Consistency is the key to success in cracking the GRE exam, so make it a point to stick to your schedule strictly.

Now that you have an overview of how to crack the GRE exam, let's now discuss some of the preparation tips for cracking the GRE test:

Tips on How to Prepare for GRE Exam

The GRE is a standardised test containing three different types of questions such as quantitative, verbal and analytical. So, preparing wisely to score well in all GRE sections is vital.

Here are some tips that will help you to accelerate your GRE preparation:

1. Start Early

2. Make a timetable

3. Refer to the best study material

4. Give extra time to vocabulary

5. Time management

6. Special focus on quantitative skills

7. Practice mock tests

8. Target weak areas

Start Early

You must start your GRE preparation early, at least two to three months prior to the test. However, it will be better if you can give four to five months for your GRE preparation as being a structured test, each section of the test comes with new challenges. So, it is crucial for you to ace them with constant and consistent preparation. This gives you enough time to manage your ongoing activities with test preparation.

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Make a Timetable

Having a proper timetable helps you to manage your time effectively. You must divide your time based on the three sections so that each one gets enough time for preparation. Also, if you are weak in any section, try to allocate it some extra days. This will balance your daily routine and enhance your efficiency and productivity with time.

Refer To The Best Study Material

You must choose the best study material, whether GRE books or apps. Thousands of GRE preparation books are available in the market, but not all are relevant for the test. Also, don't take too much study material, which is of no use. Instead, choose the one which you can easily comprehend for the test. You can also refer to some online study materials, which are quite useful and easily available.

Give Extra Time To Vocabulary

GRE vocabulary preparation is an important part of overall GRE prep as it assists you in verbal and analytical writing. It not only helps you understand a word's meaning, but also you can use words in the analytical section in appropriate places to express your ideas in an effective manner. Having a good vocabulary will also help you to improve your GRE scores decently enough. You can read a lot of texts, novels, magazines, newspapers etc to improve your vocabulary.

Time Management

While preparing to crack GRE, ensure you can work on how to manage your time in the GRE test effectively. Poor time management can sometimes create a lot of confusion during the test. So try to increase your question-solving time through rigorous practice.

Special Focus on Quantitative Skills

The GRE quantitative section mainly checks your mathematics and higher-order reasoning skills. However, it is quite difficult to attempt the quant section in comparison to the other two. Although it varies from person to person, a number of questions are based on simple logic with a slight twist that makes it a bit challenging.

So, having an efficient approach for the test would help you to figure out the test pattern with some tricky questions and develop a strategy to use them in the test.

Practice Mock Tests

You can also solve GRE sample papers and practice tests on a regular basis to evaluate your test performance and gain familiarity with the test pattern. This helps you in knowing your weaker and stronger areas. It also helps in understanding the obstacles of answer choices. Apart from this, you also get an environment to be familiar with test conditions.

Target Weak Areas

Once you solve some mock tests, you will clearly understand your weakness and strength. After analysing, you can get how to approach different strategies. You can allocate more time and give extra attention to the weaker part in the beginning. However, at the end of preparation, your main focus should be on stronger areas and practice them as much as possible.

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Solving GRE mock papers with regular practice helps you to boost your confidence and scores too. As you do so, you will get more knowledge and confidence to score in the GRE exam. Also, you will become more essentially familiar with all the possible types of GRE questions, wordings, and other instructions.

To conduct regular mock tests and enhance your learning experience, making use of tools such as Yocket GRE Prep helps. This is a free and basic tool wherein students can sign in, access multiple GRE mock tests and retrieve a score sheet to access their performance. While this tool is great to get started, it isn't enough to enhance your GRE preparation deeper. Investing in our premium version of this tool, Yocket GRE Prep+, is wisable.

Our premium tool lets you unlock all possible GRE tests, such as multiple mini-tests, full-GRE practice tests and much more.