Hi all,

Firstly, I would like to thank Carcass. He is always there at GREPREPCLUB to help you out. And obviously, a huge shoutout to this amazing community of GRE aspirants.

Here's a bit of a background about me - I am 25 yo Indian who is working with 3+ years of healthcare analytics and consulting domain experience. I am an ECE grad.I started my journey with an aim to get into B-Schools. Working a full time job and finding time to study was an absolute disaster in the first couple of weeks. However, one thing that I realised from my trysts with GRE is that consistency is the key. Even if that means you are consistent for 15 days.

Quants - Being an engineering Grad, Quants was easier for me. All I had to do was brush up my skills and practice. I took an official mock test to gauge my current standing at the time I started preparing and got 311 (Q162 V149) and figured out the topics where I was failing miserably in Quants. Post that, I took those topics up in Manhattan 5lb book and did all the questions it had to offer. Took the same topics in GRE Prep Guide and completed them.

Verbal - Word meanings are ABSOLUTELY IMPORTANT. I cannot emphasize the extent to which they help in GRE Verbal. I memorized somewhere around 700 words in a month and practised them over and over again, be it by using online flashcard or writing them in a notebook. The most difficult aspect for me was RC because I had absolutely lost touch with it. I would like to thank GregMAT for this. His courses, his study plans, his video tutorials are all worth it. For like 500 INR i think I got a treasure trove of information.

Materials used :

1. Manhattan 5lb (selectively)
2. GRE Official Guides (selectively)
3. GregMat+

Mock tests - I took mock tests in the same setup and timings as I was about to do on the D-Day. I took 5 mock tests and my scores were following :

Mock 1 - Official Mock 1 - 311 (Q162, V149)
Mock 2 - Princeton Free Mock - 319 (Q164, V155)
Mock 3 - Manhattan Free Mock - 320 (Q165, V155)
Mock 4 - Official Mock 2 - 320 (Q166, V154)
Mock 5 - Official Mock 3 - 321 (Q166, V155)

On the day of test, I woke up pretty relaxed and revised a few tricky words from my wordlist and began my login formalities around 4 PM IST (my test was scheduled at 4.20 PM, so I pretty much stared at screen for 20 min XD)
The process was fairly smooth. The invigilator was polite and friendly and asked me to show the surroundings and testing environments. The test went fairly smooth. I got VQVQV which was disheartening (I am QVQVQ kinda person ). I felt a little nervous at the time when it was 15 min break since I tried reaching out to the invigiator for a restroom break but didn't get any response. Finally, I took off and came back and she didn't even realize that I left, so I guess it went fine .

After three and half hours of testing, when the scores came up on my screen, I was in trance for a while. It was certainly more than whatever I have ever scored on Mocks and I just jumped in delight. I guess all's well that ends well.

Hope my experience and learnings help other aspirants traverse their journey of GRE! All the best to all of you out there.