GRE Prep

I used the Kaplan GRE General Book and the Kaplan Math supplement. The general book came with a CD that was very helpful. I studied using those two books with the CD about 3 times a week for a month. I did alot of practice questions too. Hope that helps.

Hi,

I used the "free" materials provided by the GRE people. Go to the GRE's home page http://www.ets.org/portal/site/ets/menuitem.fab2360b1645a1de9b3a0779f1751509/?vgnextoid=b195e3b5f64f4010VgnVCM10000022f95190RCRD. Click on Prepare for the Test. You can download paper tests and POWERPREP which is the computer based test. It give example essays, essay questions (hundreds of them), math questions, everything. I also went to the library to get a Kaplan GRE book.

I used Princeton to study for it. They put out a great book. I especially liked the verbal and writing preps in that book. I also worked math problems from the GRE web site and a couple of books at Barnes and Noble that I didn't buy (I just brought a notebook to B&N and studied at the store).

I did math until I could intuit what they really wanted for the answer. There are tricks to it. You have to do enough of them to recognize the patterns in the problems. For instance, some triangles are very commonly seen on the GRE and they always have the same relationships between the three sides. If you know what two of the sides are, or even one of the sides in some instances, you will know what the other sides are just because you recognize the pattern. Get a book that tells you the secrets.

The writing portion can be made easier if you follow a pre-planned template for your essays. For instance, if you are writing an analysis of an argument, one book suggests that you write out your key phrases ahead of time so that you don't have to waste time thinking of a beginning i.e. " The argument that _________ is a valid one on the surface. But if one looks closer, one can see that it just doesn't hold water. For instance..."

I found this to be extremely helpful. Also, write several practice essays. I avoided this exercise because it's time consuming. But I finally bit the bullet and wrote a few. Boy, am I glad I did! One of my practice essay questions was almost verbatim what I had on the GRE! I had already written the basic essay at home. I know this is unusual but the structure of the other essays I wrote really came in handy too.

Anyway, these things take time. Schedule your GRE for a few months from now and work towards the date.

In addition to using the Kaplan book previously mentioned, I also used the free online website www.number2.com The combination of techniques learned from each source helped me greatly boost my score.

Thank you all for your help!