Hi, my name is Arun and I received a score of 335 (Quants-170 Verbal-165) in the GRE and a score of 5 in the AWA section of the GRE.

There were three primary reasons for how I got a good score.

The first and fundamental reason was the guidance I received from Jamboree’s teachers. The Quants and Verbal faculty from the Anna Nagar branch are highly qualified professionals who taught me the most important lesson: GRE is simple. There is nothing complex about the questions that are given in the Quants sections. I remember that I tried to use all the complex maths that I learnt in the 11th and 12th until I was asked not to over think things. The Quants sir faculty showed me that every question had a simple method and could be solved in less than 20 seconds. Knowing this quickly made me start thinking of new ways to solve the problems instead of simple number crunching. The Verbal coaching was designed in such a way that I soon got used to GRE’s style of questions. In the beginning, the complex structure of the sentences threw me off but over time I got used to it and was able to answer most questions correctly.

The second reason is the material that I used to study after the classes got over. The two supplements provided by Jamboree are crammed with enough problems to last a year and I still hadn’t finished both the books by the time I finally wrote the GRE. I used books from other coaching centres too but few came close to the quality of questions provided in Jamboree’s books.

The third and final reason is the numerous tests that I wrote before the exam. I gave probably 11-12 tests out of which I attended 3 AWA sections. I was too lazy to attend the AWA section for the first 9. The Powerprep tests offered by ETS are the closest one can come to the actual GRE experience and they provide a passable range of questions. The most challenging tests I wrote were the 5 provided by Jamboree in its online portal in which 3 tests had horrendously difficult Quants sections where I barely scraped a 155. Reviewing those questions to find my mistakes helped me improve my Quants aptitude significantly.

You might think that I have neglected to talk about the part where most Indians struggle, the dreaded Verbal and AWA sections. There is only one way to get about solving this problem though it might sound clichéd. That way is practice. Almost 80% of the words in GRE won’t be used in normal conversations but they have to be studied and remembered somehow. It might be a bitter pill to swallow but there are ways to ease the hardship of memorizing the words. The Magoosh app was key for my learning almost 500 new words in just a few days. The word lists provided in the Jamboree supplement also helped immensely.

Finally, after all the prep is done and you go to the test centre, remaining calm is very very important. The fact that I had a friend with whom I wrote the test really helped. Casual banter helped calm my nerves and that might be the biggest reason for my score. Anyway, I really hope this review of my test experience might help all you guys about to attempt the test out there! All the best!