GRE/MAT & Graduate School Blog

Whenever you’re working toward improving a skill and pursuing a long-term goal, your path is likely to go through some periods of significant progress and other periods of stalled progress, or plateaus. This is often a natural part of the process of improvement, but sometimes those plateaus can be stubborn, and they may indicate you need to take a new approach. Plateaus can be especially problematic when the goal you’re pursuing is one with significant impacts on your life, as is the case when studying for the GRE.

The GRE has lots of downstream effects that influence your future path. Your performance on the GRE will determine what kind of grad school you get into, which will then determine the course the rest of your career takes. Therefore, as you go about your GRE prep, it’s crucial to be smart and responsive when you hit a plateau in your progress. 

Luckily, people tend to hit plateaus in their GRE prep for a few relatively common reasons, and they can each be addressed in different ways. In this article, we’ll look at some possible causes for your stalled progress in your GRE prep, and we’ll offer solutions for changing your approach so you can start seeing improvements again.

The new GRE is going into effect on September 22, 2023, and there are some major changes on the horizon. Most importantly, the overall length of the test is being cut in half, from 3 hours and 45 minutes total for the old GRE down to 1 hour and 58 minutes for the new GRE. 

However, while the overall length of the new GRE is shorter, timing is still going to be a major challenge, and something you’re going to want to focus on a lot as you go about your GRE prep. You’ll be working against the clock throughout the test, and if you’re not prepared for that, it’s going to significantly hurt your scoring potential.

In this article, we’ll walk you through some tips and strategies for improving your timing as you study for the new GRE.

You may have heard the news by now—there are significant changes coming to the GRE, starting in September of this year (2023). The GRE does change from time to time, though it’s been a while since it’s undergone any change on this scale. 

The updated GRE is going to make the test-taking experience very different from what students have encountered over the past several years. If you’re in the middle of your GRE prep, and you’re thinking of scheduling a test date during or after September, 2023, you’ll want to keep reading so you can be prepared for what to expect.

One of the most important question types on the quantitative section of the GRE is Data Interpretation, which is sometimes referred to as Data Analysis. Unlike, say, the algebra and geometry questions, Data Interpretation questions don’t rely so much on your knowledge of mathematical formulae. Rather, they primarily test your ability to make sense of numerical information that’s presented graphically, usually in the form of some kind of graph or chart. 

While the actual mathematical concepts are not always as challenging as other GRE quant question types, Data Interpretation questions can be surprisingly tricky. And it’s important to learn how to work with them, since they account for approximately 20% of your GRE quant score. In this section, we’ve collected several tips and strategies for you to consider as you go about your GRE prep.

One of the main challenges of the GRE’s Reading Comprehension questions is that, unlike math, there are no set formulas to learn. This can make Reading Comprehension seem harder, if not impossible, to study for. It seems like the necessary skills are more deeply ingrained—you either have them, or you don’t.

But that’s actually not true. You actually can take lots of steps in your GRE prep to improve your ability to work with Reading Comprehension questions. In this article, we’ll take you through some of the most powerful tips and strategies you can use to improve your ability to tackle GRE Reading Comprehension questions and raise your score.

While much of the subject matter on the Quant section of the GRE will be familiar to you, one common question type is likely to be unfamiliar: Quantitative Comparisons. QC questions are extremely important to focus on in your GRE prep, as they account for over a third of the entire Quantitative section of the test. However, it’s likely that you haven’t encountered this particular question structure before.

If you’re studying for the GRE, then you’re probably already aware that vocabulary is a big component of the test. The GRE—or Graduate Record Examination—contains many questions that test your knowledge of academic English. Unfortunately, there’s no way to gain a comprehensive knowledge of every possible word you might encounter on test day. The English language is simply too vast. Even studying official past tests will only help you insofar as it teaches you the kind of words you’re likely to encounter on the test. The actual vocab words you’ll encounter on test day are unlikely to include many repeats from past tests.

But all that doesn’t mean there’s no way to prep for the vocabulary on the GRE. It just means you’re going to have to more strategic in the ways you study. That’s why we’ve compiled this list of helpful study tips, so you can make the most of your GRE prep.

If you’re considering applying to grad school, then there’s a good chance you’re going to have to contend with the GRE. The GRE—more fully known as the Graduate Record Exam—is used as an admissions test by many graduate schools in the US and Canada, for a variety of academic disciplines. The GRE’s wide applicability has to do with the fact that it measures a broad and general range of skills, including verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, analytical writing, and critical thinking.

In this article, we’ll work through a standard GRE Quantitative Comparison question from the ETS Official Guide to demonstrate how estimating can be more efficient than calculating the exact answer. You can either read this article or watch this GMAT sentence correction video on YouTube.

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