So, your official GRE exam is coming up in a few days. To help you get the best score you can, I’d like to share some valuable tips for GRE test day and the days leading up to your exam, and hopefully impart some inspiration as well. With the 23 GRE tips in this article, you’ll be able to head into test day with your head held high.


A major component of earning a good GRE score is savvy time-management. Although different students use different time-management techniques, whatever strategy you use, don’t let yourself get behind on the clock. Be disciplined. This is one of the most important GRE tips I can give you.

If you have practiced spending one-and-a-half minutes per quantitative question, don’t suddenly start spending five minutes or more on a given question because you’re desperate to find an answer. If you can’t answer a question in the allotted amount of time, quickly eliminate any answers you can, take your best educated guess from the remaining answer choices, mark the question for review, and move on.

Don’t let yourself get behind on the clock.

If you spend four or five minutes on a few earlier questions, you’ll likely end up guessing on the last four to six questions. There is reasonable evidence to suggest that guessing on these questions will lower your score. Be strategic with your time-management on test day.


Staying engaged and focused is essential to your success. When you begin solving the first problem on the GRE quantitative section, don’t think about anything else but that problem. Don’t worry about the questions that lie ahead, don’t worry about those final few formulas you couldn’t master, and certainly don’t worry about how other students in the room are doing.

Just focus, be in the moment, own it; this is your time to shine. Similarly, as you begin each subsequent problem, don’t ever think back to the earlier problems and don’t anticipate upcoming problems. Don’t think about anything except exactly what you’re working on at that exact second in time.

Be in the moment.


You will never know how well you are doing until the test is over. Despite your best intuition, you have absolutely no way of determining whether a question is easy or hard for the purposes of your score. You have no way of knowing how other students did or are doing on similar problems.

What seems easy to you may be hard for the majority, and what seems hard to you may be easy for the majority. Furthermore, you’ll be blindly exposed to a section of experimental questions.

That is, you won’t know it’s experimental. Perhaps the section that’s worrying you so much won’t even be counted. So why waste your limited energy thinking about things you can’t control?

Just focus on doing the absolute best you can. Similarly, do not try to guess how well you did on a particular section. You may feel like you really bombed verbal section 1, but you have no real way of knowing. Worse yet, if you get down on yourself because you assume you messed up on the first GRE verbal section, that may negatively affect how you perform on the next one.

Why waste your limited energy thinking about things you can’t control?


Too many student experience anxiety regarding the number of questions they have to answer correctly. First, worrying about your performance never improves your performance; being alert to the problem at hand can do that. Second, realize that you can probably get more questions wrong than you think and still get a good score.

The GRE exam is computer-adaptive. That is, the questions presented to you in, for example, math section 2 are based on how well you performed on math section 1 (and the same for verbal). So, at some point, you’ll be facing questions that will be difficult for you to answer, and you’ll possibly get them wrong. That’s okay—you should expect that to happen: it happens to almost everyone. Remember, you don’t have to answer every question correctly to earn a good score. To be clear, your goal is to correctly answer as many questions as you can. Just stay focused on that goal.


Let’s first be crystal clear about one thing: if you find yourself having to guess and mark for review a large number of questions, you are probably not as prepared as you should be. With that said, almost all test-takers will encounter some problems that are just too difficult for them to solve. Recognize the question types that you know are difficult for you, take your best guess on them, mark for review, and move on.

For example, maybe you didn’t have the time to study functions sufficiently. Furthermore, let’s say you tend to incorrectly answer roughly 80 percent of all function questions you attempt. If you see what appears to be a difficult function question on the test, would it be wise to spend four minutes trying to solve it? Probably not.

Instead, guess and move on to the next question, armed with the extra time that you just gained by not wasting time on a likely miss. In other words, use strategic guessing to enhance your score. Fight the battles you have a good chance of winning.

Don’t let yourself get behind on the clock.
If you spend four or five minutes on a few earlier questions, you’ll likely end up guessing on the last four to six questions. There is reasonable evidence to suggest that guessing on these questions will lower your score. Be strategic with your time-management on test day.


As you go through a given section, you may encounter a question that stumps you. You might be tempted to skip it, knowing that you are allowed to come back to it later. Heed this advice: Answer it instead of skipping it! Even if it’s a wild guess, force yourself to mark an answer choice. Be sure to mark the question for review, and then move on to the next question.

Here’s the rationale: it’s possible that you will run out of time at or near the end of the section. If this happens, then at least you guessed at the answer, and there is a chance that you will get it correct. If you instead chose to leave it blank and then had no time to go back to it, then there is no chance of getting it correct.

Remember, the GRE does not penalize you for an incorrect answer; it gives you credit for the questions you answered correctly. By using this strategy, you could get one (or more) extra questions correct because you at least marked an answer.


Often, students who perform below their goals on the GRE say that they had a hard time with the first few questions and, as a result, lost their focus on the following questions. Of course, it would be desirable to recognize and easily solve the first few questions you encounter, but if you can’t, or if the first few questions seem unusually abstract or difficult, don’t worry. Just keep your focus. Put your energy into the questions to come; don’t ever think back. Stay engaged.

Remember, you can guess on any question that flusters you. Make sure you mark it for review, and if you have time at the end of that section, bring up the status screen and take another look at it. It’s quite possible that you will now be able to see it in a new light, and you’ll be able to solve it.


You have already done practice tests, so you know that the online calculator is unwieldy to use. You know that when you bring it up, it blocks the current question, and then you have to move it out of the way even before you hit the first keystroke. The calculator is both a distraction and a time-waster. Use it if you must, but realize that you are wasting valuable seconds every time you do.

That said, if your brain totally forgets the product of 8 and 7, don’t get the problem wrong because you mistakenly guessed 54 instead of 56. Wise use of the calculator will help you through some tough calculations, but don’t let it be too much of a crutch.