Hello Everyone,

I gave GRE twice at the test center: first in October and then in December.

Prior to the exam and prep:

I am generally good with quant and my score never went below 165 during any of the practice tests. I completed the Manhattan 5 lbs book as well as easy, medium and hard difficulty questions from Magoosh. I took a total of 5 tests from various sources, the most being from Magoosh. Verbal score fluctuated between 145 and 158. I had a hard time memorizing words from the various lists available online. I tried the mnemonic approach and picture/phrase based approach but none worked for me. So my mindset for the exam was to give it all in Quant and not to think too much about verbal.

First Attempt:

On the test day, I felt the quant sections were pretty tough. I did not even get time to put the pen on the paper for few questions. Verbal was just the usual and I did not know the meanings of many words. Ended up with a dismal score of 305 Q160 V145.

The period between both the tests:

I was fixated on re-attempting the exam and hence started checking out a different platform than the one I previously used. After a bit of research, I ended up paying for Greg Mat who charges USD 5 for a month's duration. I had 45 days before my re-attempt but due to some extreme things that happened within my family, I could not prepare for the first 35 days or so. For the last few days, I just looked up at the different strategies in Greg Mat's course, especially for the verbal section. I did not learn any new words this time as well. For quant, I just re-worked on the questions which I messed-up when I first got my hands on the Manhattan 5lbs book. My mindset this time was entirely different. I knew I had not prepared a tenth of what I did the first time and I had nothing to lose due to the unforeseen situations that happened over the past month. I slept for around 6 hrs before the exam and then a few more minutes on my way to the test center (you can probably figure out how my attitude for the test was )

Second Attempt:

Surprisingly, I felt the quant section to be easier this time. I was making good progress through the first few questions and I started feeling confident. But as the sections passed, the questions started feeling tougher and longer for me. But overall the level of difficulty was lower than the last time.
Then came the verbal sections. I applied the strategies I learned from Greg Mat, especially the pairing strategy and felt I did better this time on verbal than the last time. But RCs put a brake on my progress as I found them to be lengthy. But overall, I felt I had done better.

Score: 321 Q166 V155. I knew I could have scored a point more in one of the earlier quant section as I knew I messed up with a question after progressing to the next section. That's the only regret I have, but pretty happy with my score.