GRE Preparation

GRE is a computer base test that is important to undergo to take admission in graduate schools and universities in United States and other English speaking countries. Therefore, it proves to be an important test which needs a lot of hard work and perseverance.  Clearing GRE is definitely a difficult task and you cannot crack it by doing last minute study. You need sufficient amount of time to properly prepare it and score above your expectations in the test. Following are some tips that will be of great help in your  GRE preparation.
1.Sufficient content – You need to gather all your study material much ahead of time. This way you will get time enough time to read it thoroughly, review it and scan everything at least at ones. It is advised that you start your preparation at least 4 months before the actual examination.  It is important that you go through your content on regular basis, no matter when you start your GRE Preparation you should have enough time to browse and practice everything.
2.Practice on your weaknesses-  If you think you lack somewhere or some part of your study material needs more practice and attention, make sure you start practicing you weak points when you start your preparation rather than leaving them unnoticed or leave for the latter part.
3.Prepare your study schedules- There are times when your preparation will be stuck by family commitments, friends, and parties. But if you ignore all of that and respect the time that you’ve dedicated for your preparation, you will acquire good habit and you will master the art of scheduling.
4.Set your goal- You need to determine how much you want to score in your GRE test and ones you will be able to do that, you will also prepare for the test in the same way.  This will give you a better idea of how much effort you need to make in how much time and for how much content to get the result you desire.  Setting a goal helps you to look forward in a direction which is subjected to achieve your goal.
5.Be patient- Since GRE preparation is not an easy process, it is a long and tedious process therefore it is important that you prepare patiently and take proper diet during the preparation. Also, it is important to take enough rest, proper sleep and eat nutritious food; this will keep you mentally and physically active.
6.Avoid distractions- While you are preparing for GRE, you need to ignore and avoid everything that acts as a hindrance in your preparation process. The time you spare for your preparation should only be dedicated to preparation, you should not use your cell phone or watch TV or go out with friends in your scheduled time.

7.Prepare according to the actual timing of the test- There is a specific time in which you need to complete your test. If you prepare for your test according to the time assigned in actual test, you will be easily able to divide your time properly on various sections of the test and it will help you to complete your test faster.

You just graduated from college and you are ready to take the world by storm. Everybody is concerned with their future and getting further studies such as enrolling in a graduate school could take you places in your career. In some society, the number of units that you earned as a student can sometimes be a basis for employment for the reason that you possess above average knowledge than normal college graduates. Students are pressured to study for their entrance exams and undergo GRE Preparation to make them confident in taking the examination and go into in their chosen school.

What is GRE Preparation? GRE stands for Graduate Records Examination preparation designed to prepare and test students if they are fit to be enrolled in graduate schools. It is a commercially standardized test, meaning the questions and the manner of checking the exams are consistent. GRE Preparation is invented and directed by Educational Testing Service (ETS) and the scores are recognized in some schools in United States of America and other English-speaking countries. The exam is divided into four categories; critical thinking, verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, and analytical writing skills. These four parts are not designed to favour one area of study but it was formulated to test the basic information that a student must possess before entering a graduate school. Test takers pay $160 US dollars in taking GRE Preparation and it can be in a form of computerize-based examination or the old paper-based exams in some countries.

When undertaking GRE Preparation, you need to be familiar with the four parts of the general test. Critical thinking and analytical writing skills are combined into one exam, this is a test that will analyze your ability to process a situation using your knowledge that you learn in school and in your environment. You will need to process multifaceted ideas clearly. The second part, which is the verbal reasoning, is a way to test the ability of the examinee to understand written material through oral and analogical reasoning skills. The third part, the quantitative reasoning, focuses more about your knowledge in mathematics, such as algebra, arithmetic, and geometry and data analysis. According to ETS, they are planning to change the format in August 2011 with new test design, fresh set of questions and 50% off in savings.

If you register to ETS, GRE Preparation materials are given to you for free. This contains sample tests on how to answer the exam in four categories. For those who are not living in the United States, ETS is also providing free software to guide students on the basic things that you need to know about GRE. Aside from that, ETS is also selling test materials from previous examinations with answers and practice writing online, which are scored to judge your writing abilities.

Many universities require applicants for graduate school to take the Gre Preparation. In many cases the score on the Gre Preparation is a major input to the admission decision process. If a prospective student is really interested in going to graduate school at one of these schools, it is in their interest to get as high a score on the Gre Preparation as possible. Thus, such students may decide to look for a useful Gre Preparation guide.

The Educational Testing Service  is responsible for the Gre Preparation. In most situations it is taken on a computer, though paper versions do exist and may be used when the computerized version is not available. There are three multiple choice portions and a written part. There are many versions of the test, so one could take the test several times without getting much repetition of questions.

There are also eight Subject Tests that are optional parts of the Gre Preparation. They test knowledge in specific subject areas. One can take the Gre Preparation without taking any of them, though one or more of them may be required to be considered for some graduate programs. This article only discusses how to prepare for the main Gre Preparation.

According to the Gre Preparation or training for the GRE  Preparation is not useful. This is because the Gre Preparation is testing very basic knowledge, including analytical thinking, writing, and both verbal and numerical reasoning. None of these can be acquired in a short time period. Others argue that the Gre Preparation is so formal that taking similar tests in this format is useful practice.

ETS provides the PowerPrep software package for those who are signed up to take the Gre Preparation. This preparation software includes practice questions and review material. The questions are retired from previous. It can project the score you will receive on the actual Gre Preparation.

The Gre preparation is set up to make you fail. After taking it my first time that is exactly how I felt. Preparing for the Gre preparation can be much harder than you think. The most important thing is being prepared for the computerized version. When I first took my GRE Test I did not do very well. I only scored a 950, which was very embarrassing. On the practice tests I easily scored around 730 on the math and around 550 on the English. My actual results were only 590 on math and 360 on English. It was all about time. I felt robbed after the test. For those of you who do not know about the computerized Gre preparation, here are a few facts:

- You cannot go back and forth between questions. Once you have chosen an answer it is finalized.

- When the time is up the test disappears and you cannot answer any questions.

- Your testing center is going to be very strict, so do not even think about trying to cheat on it.

- You have to have a strategy for each section, or else you will not have enough time.

- Be very attentive to the time of each question. Just guess if you have to but the time is probably the most important. Always answer a question. Never leave an answer blank.

Some people don't believe in usefulness of studying for any standardized tests. My experience has been completely opposite. I first took GRE Preparation without a day of preparation a year after graduating from university. I didn't really need to score high and thought since I had good grades in school, GRE Preparation wouldn't be that tough. I was wrong and did pretty bad. Five years later I got serious about the grad school, decided to apply to a prestigious university and had to get a very high score on Gre preparation. It took me about 4 months to prepare to the level where I was comfortable. I could have probably used few more weeks, but was getting so tired of studying that decided to go for it.

English has been my weaker point, so I spent the most time working on that part: first increasing my vocabulary and then practicing verbal questions as much as I could. Since I was pretty comfortable with math, I left it for the last month of Gre preparation and mainly concentrated on getting timing right. Here is the list of the materials that I used to study. Hopefully some of this might be useful for the future test takers.

1.Word Smart for the Gre preparation

There are about 600 words in this little book. It's not perfect, examples are a little "cheesy" and there is no pronunciation guide. Yet, I think this book really helped me. At first I tried to use flashcard software on my pocket pc to help me memorize new words, but for some reasons that didn't work well and I felt that I could remember more words using just good ol' paper flash cards. I am not sure, maybe it's the process of writing the word down, but somehow I felt I could remember more words that way. There are also little quizzes after every 5-15 words to help with learning. I think one could probably memorize about 80 words a week, though I averaged about 40-50. Obviously this is not the best method of acquiring new words, yet it did work for me. Several of them came up on GRE and quite a few I still remember.

2.The Wizard of Oz Vocabulary Builder by Mark Philips

This a pretty cool book, it introduces "Gre preparation and SAT type" words in the context of a story to ease memorization. I didn't find it as useful as the Word Smart book, yet it was a nice change from just memorizing disconnected words. Every new "big" word is explained on the same page, with more examples to make it easier to remember words. Overall it was a pretty good, though a somewhat slower way of increasing vocabulary for GRE Preparation.

3.Kaplan Gre preparation Verbal Workbook

This book has strategies and tips for verbal section and the most important a lot of test questions. It helped me a lot with reading comprehension part and just getting over my "fear" of verbal section.

4.Barron's How to Prepare for the Gre preparation Test I think out of all GRE preparation books, this one is the most useful. It has pretty good math review and its test questions are probably the closest to the GRE Preparation difficulty level maybe even a little harder. Barron also has a book "Pass Key to the GRE Preparation Test", which is basically a smaller version of this book. I've also noticed that they reuse a lot of questions from previous editions, so if you're on the budget you don't have to buy the latest edition. An older version will be just as good and the newest edition will repeat many questions anyway.

5.Gre preparation: Practicing to Take the General Test, by ETS This book is published by the same guys that make the test. The review section is not that good, you'll probably be better off with Barron or Kaplan for that. However, tests are real GRE questions that were used about 10 years ago. The test has definitely increased in difficulty since then. I was somewhat disappointed with this book, yet I think 1 or 2 questions (or very similar) from the verbal section appeared on the actual test that I took. ETS definitely recycles questions, so it can be helpful to go through this book, but keep in mind that the real test will be much harder, especially the math section.

You have heard about the Gre preparation and how difficult it is to pass this exam. You may also have been told that you must be a genius with very high IQ to pass this exam. Here is the good news; passing this exam is easy provided you have appropriate GRE preparation course material and you use the right strategies to maximize the speed and efficiency of your learning.

The  Gre preparation test is about general intelligence and knowledge. The exam requires that you have an extensive masterly of the English language vocabulary.An effective preparation course should therefore unlock the following secrets:-

   1. The first key to passing this exam is to boost your vocabulary specifically for Gre preparation. The second key is to
   2. Learn the words in a record time, that is, the shortest time possible. This should leave you with sufficient time for other things.

The problem is that this is easier said than done.Large numbers of people sit and fail the  Gre preparation test while others are sitting and passing all the time. Yet, successful test preparation is not all that difficult. Your choice of right preparation course material will make a big difference between success and failure. As a minimum, your preparation materials should constitute of the following key elements:

   1. Selected pool of score boosting  Gre preparation words. These should include the most commonly used words presented with many examples on word usage. You are therefore able to focus on GRE related material which increases your chance of passing
   2. Different learning strategies. Word repetition, reproduction and recall techniques are all important. This can be further improved using auditory simulation and passive learning prompts techniques. These techniques can boost your learning by over 100%
   3. The best software packages should include personal tutor software that remembers the words that you have learned and takes you step-by step through progressive levels of difficulties. The main benefit of this approach is that it saves you time since you can stop learning what you know. The ability to track progress is also highly motivating

Once you locate the best GRE preparation course material, you open the secret to top the scores