Pranjal Haridas 321 (Q 168, V 153)

My GRE Experience

Hi friends, i had my GRE on 26th august. I scored 321 (verbal-153, quant- 168).
I started my preparations roughly around last week of june. I am working with a fertilizer industry, so 8-6 job takes the day time plus u dont really get a lot of leaves. so basically, all these days i studied for like 2-3 hours daily with marathons on sundays.

Coming to gre experience, i was really nervous before the exam. quant was my forte. I had a target of 325 (170, 155) in mind. Personally i felt quant was tougher than i expected. verbal was actually simpler than i thought and practiced in mocks.

Quant:
quant was comparatively tough, there were a lot of questions on statistics. 4 in one of the sections and 2 in other two. Yes, quant was my experimental section (thank God for that). also, questions related to probability and geometry were lill tricky. i had a strategy for this section. I solved everything in sequence till ques no. 13, it usually took me around 15-17 mins. then i mark and skip the DI and jump to Q.17. solve the last 4, of which one usually have multiple correct ans. and i felt last 4 were lill tricky everytime. so solve them in next 7-8 mins and now again to DI for the last 10 mins. it helped me big time to manage time and maximize the quant score.

Verbal:
I practiced verbal using 'gre word list' in vocabulary.com
i found this tool extremely helpful in remembering the words. for the last week, i just worked on high frequency words (333 from baron) and practiced word groups (from annexure of Kaplan book). Word groups helped me tremendously in SE. if it weren't for word groups, i dont think i wud have scored 150+ in verbal.
In gre, SC and SE were very simple but RCs were tough. one of the RCs was huuuuuge. of course it had 4 questions on it, but still it was huge. small RCs were relatively easier.

and yeah, 1 snickers and a red bull for 10-min break
I hope my gre experience would be helpful. Cheers friends 

Henil Shah 305 (162 Q, 143 V)

GRE experience!
(2nd attempt)
Score 305.
Q-162
V-143

sections QVQVQ!
1. starting with AWA. Issue topic was very easy.
2. Argument was manageable. Language was tough though!

Now comes the main part! Was thinking VVVVV and it was Q(was hoping

Q only though but from mind it was like VVV)..

Quant- 8 comparisons. the tricky part was dat none outta 8 had answer D.

Strange! dont knw but 90% answers were either A or B. Numerical entry was

like wth man! answer was coming like 1.75 and question was to find median

of given frequency table and they were rounded to .5 nearest so was

confused what to write 1.75 or 2! finally wrote 2. median was coming like

1.5+2/2=1.75..

out of 60 quant questions 17-18 questions were of median! MEDIAN! and

all were tricky! never encountered such in nova or magoosh! 

Messed up with time as 1st section of quant was tricky and lengthy!

Quant 2nd section! I am confident that this was dummy as i answered all 20

questions corect with 10 mins to spare. checked twice and all were coming

perfect!

Quant 3rd section. Hardest of all 3 bt completed in 31 mins or so! again

MEDIAAAAAAAAAAN sums. I hate Median now!.

total questions now.
17-18 on mean median
2 probability. which i messed up and m thinking dat i scored 0/2 in that.
7 DI AND HEIGHTSSSSS, DI SECTION WAS ALSO OF

MEDIAAAAAAAAN DISTRIBUTION CHART!! and questions were like

we have to find median of 14 bars.. and all were very close to each other. i

was using pencil on the screen LOL.
6-7 percents and ratio
1 profit and loss
2 P and C
1 std dev
2 time speed work distance
no question on AP,GP.
3-5 on numbers!
5-6 on equations and linear inequalities
3-4 on geometry
1-2 on coord geometry.

Now the Verbal part!

first section was slight difficult as some words were alien to me! and RC

omg.. Such a long RC and 4 questions and time remaining only 6 Mins!

SE overall manageable. but 1 option so damn easy to figure out. to find 2nd

one was really tough!

TC thik chalta hai LOL.

P.S- will be uploading questions of quants soon which i encountered today!

Tips from my side:
1) drink red bull at 630 am if ur slot is 8 am.  GIVES u WINGS!
2) take metacin if possible. after 4 sections it would be impossible to sit!
3) take some chocolates with you to eat in 10 mins break.
4) dont drink too much water LOL pressure zyada susu zyada! 
5) keep calm and cool dont panic esp in quants!
6) most imp my pp scores pp1 308(q160 v148) pp2 307.(q 164 v 143)
Manhattan msts score range were Q 160-163 and v 140-144!
ALL the BEST to all the Aspirants!
Special thanx to this group. You guys are doing wonderful job. keep up the 

Danish Patel 328 (170 Q, 158 V)

I got done with my GRE yesterday. Ended up with a score of 328(170 quants+158 verbal). A few people requested me to share my story here so that others could benefit from it  I'll break down the entire syllabus into subsections(the way I looked at it) and tell you how I prepared for it and what it was like facing that particular section on the test day. Additionally I will list out the material I utilized.

Maths: I have studied in CBSE until class 12th and am currently in final year mechanical engineering, which largely contributed to my confidence in maths! I did not do extensive maths drills or practice from any particular book. The only time i practiced maths was when solving full length computer based practice papers. However, a few friends of mine recommended Nova and Princeton 1014 for maths practice of GRE level. Also, I highly recommend "Cracking the GRE" by Princeton Review. That one book can help you get past 315 with ease! Any edition after 2012 would help guide you through the new format test. The techniques given in the above mentioned book are priceless! Be it verbal or quants, Princeton Review techniques will help you hit bulls eye! On the test day, the questions were slightly tricky. Not withstanding the fact that I was able to complete each section within 20-25 minutes, there were alot of trap answers and multi-layered questions to try and deceive you.

Vocabulary: Some (un)wise people recommended me to start spending my nights with word power. I'm glad I didn't listen to them! Not only would it have been painstaking, it would be utterly useless! ETS says the new format is not vocabulary based and they're right. The sentence completion and sentence equivalence questions on the GRE are built not around vocabulary, but around complex sentence structures! Once I got past section 1 with ease, section 2 did contain some uncommon words, but there again, about 95% of those words were from Princeton Reviews "Hit Parade" and "Beyond Hit Parade" list, which is a modest 480 words in all. Additionally, while solving computer based full length tests, I kept a notepad open at all times and kept on adding words I did not know the meaning of to the list, to look up the meaning later. I was able to come up with a list of about 70 words there too from 11 papers(about 25-26 verbal sections). Also noteworthy is the fact that questions on the test that are structured around vocabulary have very simple sentence structure, which means if you know the meanings of all 5 or 6 words, you can mark the answer in less than 30 seconds.

RCs: At this point you may think I have set out to advertise Princeton Review, but I am being honest when I say its the best book I found out there! I used to score only about 4-6/10 in RCs per section before reading their chapter on RCs. Thereafter, my scores have been 7+ consistently! On the test, your first section(non adaptive) will contain such answer choices that almost always you would end up with 2 "maybe"s when applying Process Of Elimination. Surprisingly I found the RCs of my 2nd verbal section quite easy, which initially led me to think I must have messed up my first verbal(its adaptive) but then my scores were fairly decent.

Essays: Since I'm looking to apply for MS in Engineering, I don't really need good essay scores. I need an average of 3 of 6 and that's what I worked for. In all papers except my last 2, I did not type out full essays. However, I would read the topics and list out the following:
Issue essay: keywords, my points for, my points against, my conclusion.
Argument essay: the arguments conclusion, the premise, the assumptions, how I'd attack the assumptions.
This basically forms the outline of each essay, so on the test day you would start by listing out these things and then elaborating on each point. These techniques on essay writing, again, are taken from Princeton Review Cracking the GRE 2014.


Material:
1. The Princeton Review "Cracking The GRE" 2014.(for tips and techniques)
2. Princeton 1014 questions.(sent comp, sent equal, RC drills)
3. ETS official GRE guide.

Online Tests and scores:
1. Kaplan MST 5 online tests : 322-332(quants: 168-170, verbal: 152-162)
2. Princetonreview 4 online tests: 324-332(quants: 170, verbal: 154-162)
3. Power prep 1: 325(quants: 169, verbal: 156)
4. Power prep 2: 323(quants: 170, verbal: 153)

Additional computer based practice: Kaplan practice sets(10x verbal, 10x quants practice sections), I used to score 13-18 in those.

Good luck all! I hope my experience would benefit you all 
Any more queries, feel free to mail me 

Best Regards,
Danish Patel