Planning to give the General GRE test anytime soon? Here we have Aditya Hebbar briefing 3 simple steps  and the official guide to the GRE general test he followed to score 340/340 in the revised General GRE test.

“I began by looking at some sample questions and realizing that given enough practice, most of the questions could be cracked i.e. there was nothing brilliant or ingenious expected of you where you may come up short. Being confident was imperative, and to that end, I realized that doing well GRE is an acquired skill – no one is born with the ability to do well in GRE.

GRE Official Guide - How I did it in 3 simple steps!

1. Reading wordlists:

About one month before my exam, I started reading word lists – basically a set of words that most commonly appear in the General GRE test. Over the course of the month I memorized the meaning of almost all the words in one list (about 800 or so) – although it did help that I was already acquainted with many of them.

2. Taking sample tests to realize my weak areas:

About 2 weeks from the exam, I took my first practice test and I saw that most of my mistakes were in the comprehension type questions and also a few “fill in the blank” type questions where I didn’t know the meanings of some words. The frequency of the latter type of errors would reduce as I learnt more words but the former type needed some practice.

3. Practice and strategy:

And practice is what I did. I stumbled on a particular technique that seemed to work well for these questions – before looking at any of the questions, read the given text completely, after this answer the questions and each time you pick an answer, ask yourself why none of the other answers can be right. Doing this gives you a good chance of catching a wrong inference on your part.

Other than this I didn’t do anything special, just took lots of practice tests, about 9-10 of them. One point to note is that “free prep tests” that are available at most coaching sites are typically much harder than the actual GRE. The other point is that the Powerprep tests that you get online on the GRE site are at almost the same difficulty level as the actual test so it is a good gauge of where you stand. I took the first Powerprep test about a week before my actual test and after noting my mistakes and working on them, I took the second Powerprep test two days before my General GRE test.

I was happy with my 2nd Powerprep score and anyway I had decided to take a rest on the day before the exam, and so that was the end of my preparation for GRE."

WeMakeScholars.com congratulates Aditya for his success. And thanks for sharing your GRE success mantra and your GRE general test study guide with our followers. 

You are most welcome to share your GRE experiences and your GRE official guide if you have taken or are planning to take soon!  Use the comments section below to know more about the GRE General Test study guide. 

Article contributors:

Aditya Hebbar

Aditya is a 4th year undergraduate majoring in Physics at IISc, Bangalore, India. He plans to be a theoretical physicist and work on the areas of High Energy physics and mathematical physics. His hobbies are football, reading and PC gaming.

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