👋 Hello, my friends at GRE Prep Club!

One of the most underappreciated strategies in GRE Quant prep is topic-by-topic mastery. It’s easy to feel like you’re making progress just by doing random sets of questions, but if you’re not spending enough time digging deep into each topic, you’re probably leaving points on the table. The truth is, success on the GRE Quant section isn’t about recognizing a concept once or twice—it’s about being so familiar with the nuances of a question type that nothing the test throws at you can rattle you.

Let’s say you’re working on Rate-Time-Distance questions. You might solve a few and feel like you’ve “got it.” But until you’ve tackled a wide range of Rate-Time-Distance problems—including the tricky ones with layered units, conversions, or hidden variables—you haven’t actually built the skill to handle that topic under pressure. True mastery means solving problems until they feel boringly familiar, not just barely doable.

This level of mastery comes only from deliberate, focused practice. That means working through enough realistic practice questions in a single category to identify patterns, learn shortcuts, and internalize common traps. For example, in algebra, understanding the identity x2 – y2 = (x + y)(x – y) is a good start. But unless you’ve practiced applying that identity in disguised, multi-step problems, you might freeze when you see it buried in an unusual context on test day.

Many students make the mistake of moving on too quickly from one topic to the next, thinking that basic familiarity is enough. But on the GRE, familiar concepts are often dressed up in unfamiliar ways. If you don’t put in the reps to truly master each category, you risk getting tripped up when the test twists a concept into a new shape.

The bottom line? Don’t rush through your prep just to “cover everything.” Instead, work through Quant categories one at a time, with the goal of making yourself unshakeable in each. Mastery means not just being able to get questions right—but being unable to get them wrong. If you commit to that level of preparation, your Quant score will follow.

Reach out to me with any questions about your GRE prep. Happy studying!

Warmest regards,

Scott Woodbury-Stewart
Founder & CEO, Target Test Prep