Scoring 331/340 in GRE with 60 days of preparation.

V-161; Q-170

Before I start with the real stuff, let me quickly enumerate the different resources you will require during your preparation.

1. Magoosh’s Paid Account (Extremely Important)
2. Chris Lele’s Vocabulary Builder Workbook
   Chris Lele is an instructor at Magoosh who has been preparing students for GRE for a long time now. His book, Vocabulary Builder Workbook, is a panacea for all your vocabulary inadequacies.
3. Magoosh’s Complete Guide to GRE Vocabulary
   This is essentially a subset of Chris Lele’s book (above). However, it contains some extra high-frequency GRE words. It wouldn’t take more than 3 or 4 days to complete this book if you have already finished Chris Lele’s book.
4. Official GRE Verbal Reasoning Practice Questions
   This is the official GRE Verbal Reasoning Practice book by ETS that aims to cover the entire verbal reasoning portion of GREs. However, it doesn’t have enough questions to practice. We will pick up this book at the end — maybe a couple of weeks before the exam.
5. The Official Guide to the GRE General Test
   Same as point 4.
6. GRE Powerprep Practice Test by ETS
   These free computer-based practice tests (2 to be exact) are offered by ETS when you signup on their website. These tests mirror the actual GRE because they are both made by ETS.
7. Magoosh’s free GRE Flashcard, and Vocabulary Builder mobile app
   This app helps you review words while you are commuting or answering nature’s call. The vocabulary builder app even allows having vocab battles with random opponents.

By now you must be feeling pretty intimidated seeing all the different books and online resources. But don’t be scared. I will walk you through every step, explaining the relative importance of all the aforementioned resources along the way. And before you know it, you will have a good idea of how to approach the test.

An important note: This blog focuses mainly on improving your score in the verbal section. I will not discuss the quant section because I find Maths simple and easy, making me not-the-best advisor. If you want to improve your quant section, kindly refer to someone else’s blog. Thanks.

Before I started my GRE prep, my vocabulary was abysmal and I struggled even with the basic words like equivocal, intriguing, wary, etc. If you think your vocab is wanting, like mine was, you are in the right place :)

Additionally, you will need to spend 5–6 hours daily for your preparation if you want to get a good score. I exhort you to get rid of your social media accounts because they are enervating and will eat away your precious time.

Let’s begin!

Day 1–7

1. Start with Chris Lele’s Vocabulary Workbook at a rate of 3–4 chapters/day (around 30 words/day) and make note of all the words in a notebook. In the beginning, you will find it challenging to memorize all the words and it will feel like you are not making any progress. But don’t quit because it takes time to build your “memory muscles”. Slowly, when you start feeling comfortable, push your limits and increase your rate to 6–7 chapters/day (around 50 words/day). Right now you are building momentum and gaining word power to face the easy questions.

Day 8–17

1. Continue with Chris Lele’s Vocabulary Workbook, now at the rate of 7–8 chapters/day, meanwhile revising previous words.
2. Visit your Magoosh account and start with the easy text completion problems in the verbal section. Move one question type at a time because it will help you understand the pattern and train your brain’s network. After finishing all the easy text completions, move to easy sentence equivalence and then, in the end, to easy reading comprehension. You might find these questions rife with somewhat-heavy words, but keep moving because your vocab will catch up eventually.

Move at a rate that you complete all the easy questions in no more than 10 days. Remember, GRE will ask medium-hard questions. So wasting too much time on easy problems would not fetch you anything. Nonetheless, it is important to complete them else you will not build up the prerequisites to tackle the medium problems.

At the end of 17 days, I expect you would have finished 90–100 chapters of the vocabulary book i.e learned 720–800 new words, and be exuding with enthusiasm and confidence for you have gained so much word power. If you feel like you are falling behind, spend more hours to compensate.

Day 17–24

1. Continue with Chris Lele’s Vocabulary Workbook, now at the rate of 10 chapters/day, meanwhile revising previous words.
2. Pick up the medium-level questions (of all types) on Magoosh. Now that you have enhanced your vocab and have a good experience with easy questions, tackling medium questions would feel a bit easier. Don’t worry if it doesn’t initially. Give it time and it too shall pass. Solve at least 20 questions of each type every day (a total of 60 verbal questions per day).

At this rate, you should be over with the medium-level questions in no more than 8 days.

During this period you might notice you aren’t improving even though you are putting in a lot of effort. You might also want to punch your laptop screen. But please don’t, especially if you own a Mac (the repair charges will leave you impecunious). The following excerpt is borrowed from Atomic Habits by James Clear, and it explains this apparent discrepancy succinctly.

We often expect progress to be linear. At the very least, we hope it will come quickly. In reality, the results of our efforts are often delayed. It is not until months or years later that we realize the true value of the previous work we have done. This can result in a ‘valley of disappointment’ where people feel discouraged after putting in weeks or months of hard work without experiencing any results. However, this work was not wasted. It was simply being stored. It is not until much later that the full value of previous efforts is revealed.

More about the Valley of Disappointment on https://gijs.to/discipline/

Day 25–30

1. Continue with Chris Lele’s Vocabulary Workbook at the rate of 10 chapters/day, meanwhile revising previous words.
2. Having finished easy and medium-level questions, it is time to revisit all the questions you got wrong. I can’t stress enough how important it is to resolve the wrong questions. While you are at it, make a note of what you did wrong and try to analyze the mistakes you are repeating. For eg., you might notice you are misconstruing a word for some other word, or you are struggling with all the commas and hyphens in the sentences. Take necessary steps to mitigate those shortcomings.

Use this period to refine your knowledge and fill any gaps. This would prepare you for the harder questions.

At the end of 30 days, I expect you to have finished Chris Lele’s Vocabulary Workbook. Don’t get upset if you do not remember all the 1400 words. Just keep revising the words, especially the ones which are troubling you the most, every day and you will be okay.

Day 31–40

1. Revise all the previous words. The more you revise, the better you will get.
2. Start with Magoosh’s free vocab ebook and start skimming through the chapters. You will notice you already know more than 90% of the words because you have read them in Chris Lele’s book. Take note of all the new words you encounter and memorize them. Ideally, it would take 3–4 days to finish this book.
3. Pick up the Magoosh’s Flashcard app. Again, you will know most of the words. Make note of all the new words.
4. Pick up the hard-level verbal questions on Magoosh. Let me warn you right now. Magoosh’s hard questions are slightly more difficult than the actual GRE and you will struggle to solve them. Regardless, keep on fighting and slowly you will gain proficiency. Move at a pace to finish this within 10 days.

You have now entered the major league and it is a good idea to slow down and start noticing the subtleties of the questions at hand. Solve new questions every day and revisit those you got wrong. At this point, you will gain the most from resolving all the wrong questions. Make a note of your mistakes and take appropriate steps to reduce them.

At the end of 40 days, you would have completed easy, medium, and hard level questions and be finished with Chris Lele’s Vocabulary Workbook, Magoosh’s vocab ebook, and Magoosh’s Flashcard app. Pause for a moment and pat your back because now you are prepared enough to score a 320, easily. Now continue grinding.

Day 41–49

1. Give the first powerprep GRE test to gauge your preparation. Scoring below 320 would mean you need to put in more effort. Scoring 320–329 means you are ready and can easily move into the 330+ league with some minor refinements. Scoring 330+ means you are well prepared to face the GRE.
   Analyze your mistakes and make necessary changes in your study pattern to reduce them. For eg., you might realize you are forgetting words, or you are making silly mistakes, etc. Take necessary actions to improve upon these mistakes.
2. Keep revising all the words at the rate of 500–600 words/day. This would take approximately 60–70 minutes. The more you revise, the better you will get.
3. Keep revisiting all the questions you got wrong. Spend an hour or so doing this.
4. Now that you are confident enough with the verbal section, start focussing on the AWA section. Pick whichever section you want (Argument or Issue) and watch the related videos on your Magoosh account. Practice two tasks daily and after you are done, read the sample provided by Magoosh and re-write your task with improvements. This will take around 3 hours every day. Do this for both the argument and issue tasks. Magoosh has a total of 17–18 different tasks, so it will take 8–9 days to finish them all.
   Note: It is important you analyze the marking scheme and understand why some essays receive fewer marks and others more. Read more about this on this link.
5. Pick up the Official GRE Verbal Reasoning Practice book and start solving it. You would soon realize 80% of this book is just filled with solutions and there aren’t many questions. You will find this book easy and should be able to finish it in a couple of days.
6. Pick up the Official Guide to the GRE General test and start solving it. This book, for all its thickness, is filled with solutions and contains a modicum of questions. Finish it within 3–4 days.

Day 50–59

By this time, you would have completed Magoosh’s question bank, except for the very-hard level question. Yes, Magoosh has very-hard level questions too and I strongly suggest you stay clear of them because the actual GRE doesn’t touch this level (even Magoosh acknowledges this fact).

1. Keep revising the words, now at the rate of 800 words/day. This would take approximately 80–90 minutes. Make sure you revisit every word in 3 days.
2. Now it is time to start with Magoosh’s practice tests. Give one practice test, end to end, each day, and analyze your mistakes. Don’t grow complacent if you score 330+, because Magoosh uses the same question bank it uses for practicing. You would see a lot of questions repeating, and that is fine. Giving these tests will serve two purposes: 1) Taking the exams in a timed fashion would prepare you for the actual exam; 2) Towards the end, you must always stay in touch with all the subjects and different question types as it helps you maintain your momentum.
3. Give the second powerprep GRE practice test and analyze your mistakes. The scores you get in this exam will give you the best prediction of your actual scores.

Note: During this period, eschew picking up any new book. Also, avoid doing too many questions. Just give one exam daily and spend the rest of the time analyzing your mistakes and refining your knowledge.

Day 60

1. Appear for the exam! :) Best of luck. You got this.

Some additional points which might help you:

1. An extensive vocabulary will always help you. Once you finish the two vocab books, feel free to pick up other vocab resources. A relevant link to follow.
2. Don’t forget to practice AWA tasks, and make sure you employ your recently acquired word power. You won’t be able to perform well in the AWA section if you don’t practice enough.
3. You would see the name 5 Lb. Book of GRE Practice Problems (Manhattan Prep GRE Strategy Guides) a lot of times. People highly recommend this book but I will not. Once you finish Magoosh’s verbal questions, you would find this book easy as pie and there is no point wasting time on it. Nonetheless, if you find yourself with extra time at your disposal, you can pick it up if you like.
4. One good way of enhancing your vocab, as many people advise, is to read a lot of books. There is nothing wrong with this approach, but it will take a lot of time to see some palatable improvement. I’m not a big fan of reading books, so I circumvented it. Instead of reading books, I read a lot of AWA tasks written by different people. This helped me improve my writing skills and enhance my vocab at the same time.
   Resource: You can read sample AWA tasks at this link. He writes eloquently and his essays are rife with high-frequency GRE words.

That was my style of preparing for the GRE. This strategy worked perfectly for me, however, I do not guarantee it will work for you too. You might want to make a few alterations here and a few there to make this comprehensive plan work for you. I used to spend 6–7 hours, some days more than that, everyday preparing for GRE and I expect you to go all-in too. Go hard or go home.

Thanks for sticking till the end :)