GRE Vocab

[puravidaLV]

Just wondering if anyone had any good tips on improving for the GRE vocab section.

I'm looking into taking the GRE kaplan course with a friend and basically trying to take the GRE before I enter in the accelerated nursing program in the fall, so once I finish and take the NCLEX I don't have to mentally worry about it.

I'm in a small school and not many people I know have even completed college or taken any entry college classes:rolleyes:

[cnszja]

I think memorizing words and practicing the techniques taught by Kaplan or Princeton Review are the only ways to really prep for this section. I found a book that helped me learn words by using them in sentences, etc. rather than just memorizing them off of flash cards. Also, you might want to check out SAT vocab books too since some of these words end up on the exam as well. Good luck!

[amojo99]

for me reading was key. the ny times, ap english style books, and studying vocabulary over time; don't procrastinate. i got a 650 verbal--i didn't think it was a great score until i saw that it was in the 93rd percentile or something. but when the words and analogies came up it was still very confusing. the strategies offered by the books i bought helped at times. the most frustrating part was remembering having had studied the particular word on the screen but not being quite sure of the definition.

[cnszja]

I just remembered, after I took the GRE I read the book "And the Bank Played On" by Randy Shilts and this book was LOADED with GRE words; like, the EXACT words that I had memorized from the flashcards. Awesome book too! Just a suggestion, if you haven't already read it.

[UVA Grad Nursing]

I took the GRE twice (I had 10 years between my Masters and PhD, so needed to retake the test). I just used the study guides (mainly sample tests) to prepare. I did well on both attempts at the test. A lot of the GRE Vocab cannot be crammed -- much comes from a life-long of reading, learning, and discovery.

For the second time I took the GRE, I over-prepared. I borrowed a LSAT prep book (the reading comprehension sections there are much tougher than in the GRE, I feel). So when I sat for the GRE, I breezed through (and had spare time in all sections). I actually got higher scores in Verbal, Quant and Analytic my second time taking the test at age 31 than I had as a college senior.

If you are self-motivated, I would recommend people to invest $20-$30 in one of the commercial test books (with DVD/CD-rom) and set yourself aside several hours every week over a 2 month period to prepare for the test. If you are not self-motivated, then you can pay many times that amount for a Kaplan or Princeton Review instructor to set up an established learning schedule. It really depends on how you learn.