GRE 2018 Exam Tips and Tricks, How to prepare for each section

A successful preparation for the test completely depends on the amount of time you dedicate and your personal preferences for how you prepare. Therefore, before taking a GRE Exam, you should always have a rough idea about the Exam, its test pattern, types of questions and its time duration and much more. You must also do a little research about the Administrative procedures and the Universities that fall accepts the GRE Scores as well.

The administrative procedures includes the registration and appointment scheduling, date, time, test center location, cost, score-reporting procedures and availability of special testing arrangements.

In this article, we will providing you some of the beneficial tips and tricks for GRE 2018 Examination.

GRE Preparation Tips: An Introduction

If money is a consideration and one is enough confident to prepare well without a supervision, then self study is the best option for GRE Preparation. But, to study for GRE all by own, you need to have good books and resources of GRE, along with motivation and self-discipline.

On the other had, if you think that time is constraint and one needs a little professional guidance to sharpen the competitive edge in the GRE Exam Preparation, then Coaching Institutes are the best option. An additional benefit of taking the GRE Coaching classes is that, the faculties of the institutes will provide you the study materials along with a team of experts guiding you. Your time will be better managed and and will be regular to the classes and slowly will become a part of your routine. This will somehow, also increase your motivation levels.

Through a perfect GRE Preparation, you will be able to get into the topmost Colleges and Universities to pursue Masters and Ph. D Programs.

GRE Preparation Tips Section Wise

Verbal Reasoning Section

Pattern of the Verbal Reasoning Section:

Usually, it has been seen that the Verbal Section is seen a little difficult than mathematics section as it comprises of huge vocabulary. The purpose of the Vocabulary section is to access your comprehension of written material and the ability t6o evaluate it. It also measures your skills in analyzing the sentence structure and understanding the relationships between the words and concepts.

The Verbal Reasoning Section in GRE comprises of three types of questions:

1. Sentence Equivalence
2. Text Completion
3. Reading Comprehension

Each Verbal section includes 20 questions. Half of the section consists of the text completion and sentence equivalence questions. Whereas, the other half consists of the reading comprehension questions.

The test begins with a Six-Test Completion, which increases according to the difficulty. Next is the reading passage, this can be either a long passage or two medium passages. In between the reading passages, there will be four sentence equivalence questions.

Preparation Tips and Tricks for Improvement in Verbal Reasoning

• Learn New Words: Brush up your Vocabulary

Make your vocabulary strong. Learn new words everyday. This is one of the most important GRE Preparation Tip. Always learn new words, practice and use these words in day to day life. It always very interesting to play with words and their formations. Doing this helps you to improve your vocabulary to a great extent as well.

The best websites to refer are OALD and Webster.  These websites are extremely helpful.

• Practice Reading Comprehension:

Reading Comprehension adds an extra weightage to your GRE Paper. This section also eats up the time as well. Hence, practice as many reading comprehensions as possible. This will help you to improve your reading ability. Treat it like Mathematics. For a better practice, read at least two to three reading comprehensions in a day.

• Check and Learn Grammar:

Another most important tip for GRE Preparation is to practice Grammar. Understand the basic usages and rules of grammar. Focuses mostly on the Tenses.

Quantitative Reasoning

The Quantitative section tests your basic mathematical skills, basic elementary mathematical concepts, and ability to reason with numbers and to solve problems with the quantitative methods. The Quantitative Reasoning has two sections with 20 questions each. The time duration for each section is 35 minutes.

Question Types Available in the GRE 2018 Exam:

You will get questions from these three math topics:

1. Compare Quantities:

These questions asks you to compare two quantities (A and B) and determine the relationship between them, like for an example whether A is greater or B is greater or both are equal or the relationship cannot be determined from the given information.

2. Data Interpretation or Graphs:

These questions are used to determine and compute the information and choose the correct answer based on the visual graphs and tables. You need to interpret these data given and answer it correctly.

3. Numeric Entry Questions:

These questions require you to answer in the answer box rather than choosing them from the alternatives.

The best part of the GRE Quantitative Section is that it includes that maths topics that were taught in the schools like algebra, algebra, introductory statistics etc. This section does not include the higher-level mathematics like trigonometry, calculus etc.

Preparation Tips for Quantitative Reasoning: 

• Practice Elementary Mathematics as much as you can:

The candidates who are appearing for the GRE 2018 Exam, must make their fundamentals strong. They must make sure that their concepts of elementary mathematics is clear. The main topics of this section include: Arithmetic, Algebra, Geometry and Data Analysis. Direct questions will be asked as well as the questions that requires the application of the mathematical concepts will also be asked. This tests your confidence in the topic. So, make sure that you have your concepts clear before you take a GRE Exam.

• Solve the Sample Papers Regularly:

One of the most effective GRE Preparation Tip is to solve as much Test Papers or Sample Papers as you can. It is because, the Quant Section is one of the trickiest sections of GRE and it is clever to get prepared for the kind of expected questions.

• Solve and Repeat Practicing:

The best way to hold over a concept is to practice more and more. If you are solving a particular section or topic and your concept at that particular topic is strong, then don’t leave the touch. Repeat it again and practice with more examples. In short, the more you practice the more you clear your concepts.

GRE Analytical Writing

This sections tests the skills of the candidate’s in various fields such as critical thinking and analytical writing skills. It improves the ability to express the complex ideas and maintains a coherent and focused discussion.

Format of the Analytical Writing Skills:

In this section, there will be two tasks. One is the analyze an Issue and the other is Analyze an Argument. A time limit of 30 minutes is given for each task.

Analyze an Issue:

In this section of question, you need to write down an essay where you respond to a brief statement over an issue of General Interest. This tasks examines your ability to think critically about a general interest topic and expresses your thought in writing.

Analyze an Argument:

In this task, you need to compose an essay where you analyze a paragraph-length argument. Here, you don’t have to present your own views on the topic. This task examines the ability to understand, analyze and evaluate the arguments. The arguments will be presented in a small paragraph which indicates the author’s opinion or case.

GRE Tips and Tricks to Tackle the Analytical Writing:

• Read and Analyze:

This trick is simple yet efficient. Read as much as possible and analyze the content. Read the opinions well and learn to give reasons from the opinions. Analyze from every point of the view from the substantiation.

• Practice Writing:

Writing is very important. Take a topic and start writing on it. Practice using a better vocabulary for expressing the views and the arguments. You can go through the current topics to get more ideas.

Take the following tips into consideration for GRE Analytical Writing:

• The direction of the argument, which means either write for “for” or “against”
• Listing out all the points for or against the issue.
• Filtering Points Based on Reason and Importance.
• Dividing argument into well-defined sections so as to clarify the stand.

Other Life Hack Tricks for the GRE 2018 Test Preparation

• Rewrite the problems and try them every week. Practice more and more. Doing this will enhance and boost your fundamentals and concepts of the subjects.
• Budget your time- doing this will save your most of the time for doing correction or the questions that you have marked for review. This will also improve the time management skills.
• Dedicate at least 10-15 hours of time for study.
• Go for Online Practice Test Papers. This will help you to get a rough idea of your performance in the topics in the real time.
• Doing timed tests, will develop your flexibility and accuracy.
• Create flash cards. This will help you to memorize your concepts and fundamentals on the topics.
• Have healthy food and take an adequate amount of sleep.