GRE Verbal Study Guide
November 2, 2010 3:46 AM Subscribe
What is the best study guide for raising one's GRE Verbal score quickly?
A student needs to raise their GRE Verbal score in one month's time. What are the best study guides for this purpose? Do you recommend buying a book of practice tests along with a directed guide for each section of the exam? Titles that have worked for you are appreciated.
Taking a study course is not an option. Thanks.
A student needs to raise their GRE Verbal score in one month's time. What are the best study guides for this purpose? Do you recommend buying a book of practice tests along with a directed guide for each section of the exam? Titles that have worked for you are appreciated.
Taking a study course is not an option. Thanks.
I actually think that getting a variety of books is the best option - I'm sure that I raised by verbal score simply by taking out every GRE book in the local library. The important parts of the book to look for are a list of the 100 (or whatever number) most commonly used words - I think that maybe 50% of those words were on my test (hint: hirsute is going to be on there) - and also numerous practice tests. Practice tests are especially important if the student has issues with time management. If you are also going to purchase a book, I believe that Kaplan has an online component which is nice because it better replicates the online format of the exam.
posted by fermezporte at 4:44 AM on November 2, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by fermezporte at 4:44 AM on November 2, 2010 [1 favorite]
The thing that helped me most on the GRE was taking practice tests to get used to the temporality of the thing, as well as understand more intuitively the way the way computer scaled scoring works.
Make sure your student understands that questions at the beginning of the test count more than questions at the end of the test so they know how to practice.
posted by gerryblog at 6:12 AM on November 2, 2010 [1 favorite]
Make sure your student understands that questions at the beginning of the test count more than questions at the end of the test so they know how to practice.
posted by gerryblog at 6:12 AM on November 2, 2010 [1 favorite]
I raised my verbal score on my GRE by making flash cards. I chose 250 words from the vocabulary lists that seemed most interesting to me and made 250 flash cards. I carried them everywhere with me for a month and over all sorts of odd moments (waiting on line, etc) managed to learn all 250. 15 years later I've retained these words.
posted by Pineapplicious at 6:54 AM on November 2, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by Pineapplicious at 6:54 AM on November 2, 2010 [1 favorite]
Princeton Review has a series of study guides called "Word Smart," which are pretty good for vocabulary building (for the GRE or otherwise).
posted by SuzB at 2:30 PM on November 2, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by SuzB at 2:30 PM on November 2, 2010 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Thank you all for your very helpful answers.
posted by vincele at 5:40 AM on November 3, 2010
posted by vincele at 5:40 AM on November 3, 2010
Even though there's only a month before the test, the student might consider using SRS software like Anki to help memorize the words. I use it to memorize hanzi and it works wonders.
posted by lhp81 at 6:39 AM on November 5, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by lhp81 at 6:39 AM on November 5, 2010 [1 favorite]
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by WhiteWhale at 3:55 AM on November 2, 2010 [1 favorite]