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 these 7 GRE tips, you’ll be able to head into test day with your head held high.

👉 Tip #1: Manage Your Time Properly

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.

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.

👉 Tip #2: Don’t Try to Determine How Well You’re Doing

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.

👉 Tip #3: Don’t Seek Perfection

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.

👉 Tip #4: Don’t Worry If You Struggle With the First Question or Two

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.

👉 Tip #5: Take Your Breaks

The breaks are short (1 minute after each section, and a 10-minute break after the third section), but they still represent an opportunity to let your brain take a little rest, even if you just sit with your eyes closed. Relax. Refocus. You can also use the 10-minute break to use the restroom, eat a protein bar, drink some water, replenish your scratch paper, etc.

Use break time to ready yourself for the section to come. But watch the clock carefully; no one will tell you when your break time is over. Breaks are timed, and any extra time you take will be deducted from the amount of time allotted for the next section. Make sure that you do not pull out any notes or other materials used to study for the GRE, and do not exit the testing center at any time until the test is over.

👉 Tip #6: Relax the Day Before GRE Test Day

The day before GRE test day is not the time to try to cram in final GRE lessons or do tons of practice questions. Rather, use that time to relax and clear your head for the test. Do something fun but not overly strenuous. Get some light exercise. See a movie. Go out for dinner. Do anything that makes you feel good, but don’t spend the day immersed in GRE books. You’ll need a fresh mind tomorrow. If every bone in your body is telling you to study for the GRE on the day before your exam, remember: the GRE is the mental equivalent of a marathon. Would a marathon runner ever run 25 miles the day before the race?

Similarly, practice tests serve as a valuable tool in your GRE preparation. However, taking full-length practice tests right before your official test is not a wise move. If you’ve studied properly and strategically with a comprehensive test prep course, these last few days will provide you little value in learning new information. Instead of trying to cram new knowledge in the days before your exam, do some light studying and review, reinforcing what you already know. Give your brain and body a break; you’ll need them well-rested come test day.

👉 Tip #7: Prepare Yourself For Ups and Downs

Think of the GRE exam as a long journey. As with all journeys, expect there to be some ups and downs. To quote Mary Schmich from the Chicago Tribune, “Sometimes you’re ahead. Sometimes you’re behind. The race is long ….” Take the time to prepare yourself mentally for this fact. Don’t get overly excited when you recognize concepts and questions. Similarly, and more importantly, don’t be waylaid when you hit some rough patches during the test. Instead, stay level and focused. Be cool, calm, and confident.

Good luck studying, and reach out to me if you have any questions or need any more specific advice.

Warm regards,
Scott