Hello Guys,

I want to share my GRE experience and hope to uplift those who think GRE is simply too tough for them.

I am 3 days short of a year since I joined GRE Prepclub. Before starting on my GRE journey I took a mock test from Economist GRE Tutor. I felt really low because the predicted score from a full length test was

verbal: 144-152
Quant: 148-156

English is not my native language so I was naturally weak in Verbal. I am from Commerce background so my Quant skills were limited as well. However I came across Gre Prepclub and I started doing questions on quant and verbal sections. However I realized that I needed to brush up my fundamentals so I downloaded a free pdf of Official guide 2nd Edition and went through the book. After that I rigorously practiced problems on the forum. I used to go through the explanations on quant problems by Sandy and Greenlight Test Prep. I started to incorporate their tips and techniques when solving problems. For verbal to improve my vocabulary I used Magoosh flash cards mobile application. Verbal was more difficult for me because I simply could not comprehend passages for RC and CR. To get over this I started to read articles on the NY TImes, New Yorker, Economist and Harvard Review.
Since these publications only allow a handful of articles per month without subscription I used to visit all of these one after other and never visited the same site continuously so that I do not run out of my articles per month.
After this I took the free practice test by Princeton Review, MGRE, Kaplan and also all the free tests of GRE Prep Club.

I sat for the exam on July 2018 My score was

verbal: 156
Quant: 161

I was looking for the score of 320.

I made use of the diagnostic service to zero in on my problems. I found some of my mistakes listed those and tried to work on them

1. I was not concentrating on nuances of words for Sentence Equivalences. I knew all but one word in the entire verbal part of the test yet I made 4 mistakes in my SE. Since it is easy to memorize words than to comprehend the entire dense and uninteresting passages I thought if I am familiar with all these words I should really make proper use of those words in the exams.

2. I thought I could improve my Quant because I ran out of time for both my sections and missed 2 questions from each section. Only if I had been faster in solving problems that I solved but in less time I could boost my score.

3. The rotation of reading through publication was not really working for me especially with New Yorker and New York TImes because a single article ran the length that could be compared withs 3-4 long passages on GRE put together. So I did not have a sense of main idea of the passage, or for answering similar questions. Then I came across the site aldaily.com. It provides a right mix of articles containing science, humanity, business and isn't that long but it is longer than the long passages of GRE + It is all free no subscription required.

4. I opened up my workbook from the forum and analyzed on my mistakes. I made a point that I would not go beyond 3 minutes for any quant problem when doing practice.

5. I ran out of test because I had exhausted them during my first try at the Exam so I made use of Quant quizzes from Target Test Prep in the market place section on the forum,Mometrix in Youtube, GRE Target from Youtube, Monday's with Neil GRE lessons from MGRE in Youtube

6. Also I made use of mobile applications that allows 20-30 or more free questions these apps are MGRE, Galvanize Test Prep, Arcadia Prep

After all of these I retook the test on 3rd Jan and got

Quant: 166
Verbal: 159

Some of the key takeaway from the recent test was I could have improved a bit but I was losing stamina by the end of test and concentration was a problem. Hence it is not all about knowing the answer but rather one should have mental strength to go through the test and keep a nice flow going.

I missed two question from one of the verbal section and one from another verbal section because I kind of vacillated between answer choices for some of the questions and did not even made a random guess at the end. It is always better to make a random guess in the last 10 seconds if there are unanswered questions

I still think there is room for improvement specially in the verbal. That is something I will try to remedy in one future sitting of the exam.

I would recommend you to also work through the AWA section before doing the quant and verbal sections in your mock practice that will help you to improve stamina and focus and do all the section of a test in one go.

Also from experience (total investment apart from exam fees = $0) I would like to tell that do not go for courses and spend your money all the material is available freely to get a good score. A lot of it or most of it is in the forum itself. Best of Luck!