You've decided to take the GRE... Well, good news, we're here to help and here are two of the most important tools to have to organize your prep:

• A study plan that gives you structure in terms of preparation, practice, and review to ensure a consistent study schedule. Please refer to our GRE Study Plan (2021) Edition UPDATED
  
• An error log to track your work and to enable a deep and thorough review of your progress. You learn more by evaluating your mistakes than by simply completing questions to see how many you get correct. Use our GRE New Error Log with Ability and Accuracy

GRE Practice Won't Affect Day Job | Day Job Will Affect GRE Practice!

Prepping for the GRE is more similar to training for a marathon than to studying for a final exam. The final exam may be crammable, but the marathon certainly is not. Furthermore, marathon training is probably the most simultaneously tiring and invigorating part of your day until you actually run the race. Done properly, GRE prep can be that way too!

To best guarantee effective and efficient GRE practice, make it the first thing you do every day. Seriously. Get up early and attempt 30-70 minutes of new practice drills, about 1-2 timed practice sections, per day to build the skill set you need to excel on this exam. You'll be sharp and not affected by end of the day fatigue which will only frustrate and suppress your efforts to improve.

It is absolutely true that 30-60 minutes of highly-focused daily study is far better than three hours twice a week which invariably leads to mental exhaustion at the 90-minute mark. There are many reasons to avoid lengthy study sessions such as:

• increasing fatigue
• impaired retention
• possible damages to your body due to your long sitting sessions

Therefore, "highly-focused studying sessions" is the best practice you can do for preparing for this challenge. Also, it is important to develop your study habits. Some tips could be

• Spend most of the time - I would say 90% - trying to solve a question. The remaining 10% should be devoted to read the problem and evaluate it upfront. it does not matter it is verbal or quant;
  You do not have to read something. You must read FOR something;
• Timing is king. Time every question. Without this, solving questions in 3 hours is out of scope. The GRE is a timed test. You have to solve the questions in the allotted amount of time. See our Time management guide here GRE Pacing Strategies - Improve Your GRE Timing
• Study short—no more than 30-45 minutes without a break;
• Mix old and new. Every session should include some questions to solve with a different strategy or different approach.

Do And Self Review Every Completed Practice Problem from Every Practice Set

The only way to maximize the benefits of all of your GRE practice from either ETS resources such as the ALL GRE Official Guides [Directory] or the practice exams All GRE PowerPrep Explanations, or third-party resources GRE Quantitative FREE Practice Questions - (2021) Edition UPDATED focusing on specific issues you have to improve upon is to carefully review all of your work at least two hours after completing your practice set.

Now, you may be asking - why after two hours? Well, if you were an elite athlete, you wouldn't do tape study immediately after the game! You're too hot, you're too amped, you're too exhausted. The same effects will apply after GRE practice, especially after practice exams. So, this review is what you can do after you get off work for the day. While live practice might be too taxing to attempt after a long day working, reviewing the results with the aid of either GREPrepClub or other provided explanations is a reasonable goal on a daily basis.

Ask Two Questions of Every Completed Problem

The GRE New Error Log with Ability and Accuracy will suffice to keep track of your results from every drill you complete. All you need to do is :

1) Do I Understand the Problem and / or the Provided or Located Explanation?
2) Did I Do it Fast Enough? | Ultimately < 3:00 but to Start Possibly < 5:00 Pending Your Own Proficiency Level

The key with this review method is to make sure that you further investigate why you did or didn't understand the problem so that you can successfully execute on similar problems in the future.

Verbal Review Focuses

There are two primary categories of questions on the Verbal section of the GRE - Vocabulary questions (Sentence Equivalence & Text Completions) and Reading Comprehension and you'll want to focus on a couple of different aspects for each of these questions types.

For Vocabulary questions, you'll first want to add any unknown? terms from the choices or the sentences immediately to your vocabulary list for review. There will never be a time when your mind is riper to learn a word than when you just missed a practice question because of such a dereliction (vocab word!), so strike while the proverbial iron is hot for unknown vocabulary. Then, you'll also want to ensure that you were able to provide your own prediction word or phrase for each blank before considering the choices to guarantee a proper understanding of the context of each sentence to build your ability to comprehend GRE style fill-in-the-blank vocabulary sentences.

Next, for Reading Comprehension questions, you'll need to clearly articulate in your review why each incorrect option is definitively wrong - and I'm not talking about simply stating, I didn't like it! That's not enough!! Instead, focus on actions (verbs) and descriptions (adjectives and adverbs) to articulate objective reasons each incorrect choice is potentially a reversal of the passage, extremely based on the passage, something that requires outside knowledge beyond the passage or some other definitive reason you can replicate to eliminate choices on future questions.

Quantitative Review Focuses

There are two primary categories of questions on the Quantitative section of the GRE as well - Quantitative Comparisons and Problem Solving (Single Answer, Multiple Answer, and Numeric Entry) so you'll also want to focus on a couple of different aspects for each of these question types, too.

For the Quantitative Comparisons questions that start every GRE Quantitative section, you'll begin by simply asking - Should I have just plugged in my own values to test outcome? The answer could be Yes or No! Sometimes the technical mathematic evaluation of the quantities will be more efficient, but other times clumsily plugging in a couple of savvy values could save you the ignominy (another vocab word!) of trying to manipulate rather complex algebra under time constraints. Remember that these standardized tests really reward flexibility in approach, so the most successful preppers will work both approaches in review so as to be able to pick the best of multiple approaches on test day.

Then, for Problem Solving, you'll want to ensure that you are always considering alternative tactics to improve both accuracy and efficiency. Consider each of the four Problem Solving tactics:
1) Technical Mathematics
2) Logical Estimation
3) Plugging in Easy Values - Modeling
4) Plugging in Choices - Backsolving
Again, by taking the time later in the day to review all of the possible methods to a quantitative solution, you'll put yourself in a position to succeed on test day by not being limited to only one approach.

Tracking Progress

Obviously, do your best to keep an eye on your percentage correct and scaled scores in practice sections, but also note the number of "unforced" and "forced" errors. Until you're consistently above a 160 on either section the priority will be on minimizing mistakes and maximizing the number of questions you see with enough time to complete them. By following these review processes, you will begin putting yourself in a position to achieve your GRE goals!!