Run and Tumble

Do you know how sometimes you read good news, and know it was real, but were so excited you feel like your eyes played tricks on you and you need external proof? That’s how I feel about the GRE. I’m looking forward to getting the official score in the mail so that I know I’m not misremembering the score on the machine and did, indeed, kick its butt.

You can find a list of GRE Tips anywhere, but here’s a few I didn’t see anywhere, some of them are meta-tips.

• GRE practice books are incredibly useful, and can be expensive. However, any library near you is sure to have one.
• GRE practice books from years ago are still very helpful, but make sure the test hasn’t introduced new types of questions.
• I ended up choosing two books. One had really good review sections and test tips. The tips included specific GRE strategies. The other book was light on strategies, but separated practice questions not only by topic, but also by difficulty. An ideal book would have both.
• Don’t just read the explanations of the practice problems you got wrong. As you practice, note any questions that seemed really hard or took a long time. The explanations will often reveal a much easier approach. Recognizing common GRE math shortcuts will give you valuable time savings.
• Make sure you do the entire test at least once in one sitting. Near the end, the GRE is harder just because you’re exhausted.
• Exhaustion is exacerbated by the experimental sections you may get. Mentally prepare yourself to take yet another verbal or quantitative or both. Practice tests don’t prepare you for it and I nearly screamed when I thankfully ended what I thought was the last section only to be greeted by 30 more minutes of intense thinking.
• Work on your intuitive skills. I didn’t try this, but think it would’ve helped.  Try doing sets of practice questions in under 30s per question. This helps with both intuition and dealing with the inevitable moment you must guess to answer a question.