How to Achieve High GRE Score
Indeed, achieving a high GRE score can be daunting; however, it is needed for students looking to carry out a graduate degree in another country. This guide will give you a hint on how to achieve a high GRE score.
What is the GRE?
The GRE stands for Graduate Record Examinations. It is an exam that seeks to verify the verbal, quantitative, and analytical skills. The GRE General evaluates these capacities in general subjects and not in specific areas of knowledge. This exam is somewhat part of a requirement for those looking for graduate admission into schools in the United States and other English speaking countries. The admission board uses the exam to determine whether the student can successfully carry out a graduate program if giving admission.
How is GRE sectioned?
The GRE is divided into three sections. The first section is the analytical writing portion, which seeks to determine the potential student’s capacity to defend, build, and evaluate complex ideas and generate coherent and logical discussion. There are two tasks in this section, namely an opinion piece on a general topic of interest and the second part involves analyzing the argument made by another person.
Moving on to the second section, which is the verbal reasoning part. This part seeks to understand your skills to examine and comprehend written material, synthesizing information from it, analyzing sentences, and understanding words and concepts in English. In this section, you will answer questions on comprehension, complete parts of incomplete texts. This section also has questions where you will be asked to fill in blanks in sentences.
The final section is the Quantitative Reasoning. This test examines your skills in fundamental mathematics and your capacity to comprehend elementary mathematical concepts in four areas: arithmetic, geometry, algebra, and statistics.
It is worth mentioning that the Verbal Reasoning and Quantitative Reasoning sections have adaptive questions, meaning that if you do well in the first section, the second section’s difficulty level will be higher.
GRE duration
The GRE test is scheduled for three hours thirty minutes, with the analytical section having 60 minutes, for the verbal reasoning, you will be given 70 minutes while the Quantitative Reasoning section will be for 80 minutes divided into two parts.
GRE grade
On the GRE, the Quantitative Reasoning and Verbal Reasoning sections are measured on a scale of 130-170. The score you get in these sections will depend not only on the number of questions you have answered correctly but also on their difficulty level. For its part, the Analytical Writing section is measured on a scale between 0-6. Generally, educational institutions do not establish a minimum score on the GRE to apply to their programs, since the test results are complementary to the other admission requirements. However, the mean among people who have taken the test has been 150.75 in the Verbal Reasoning section, 151.91 in the Quantitative Reasoning section, and 3.61 in the Analytical Writing section.
How to Get a High GRE Score: 5 Tips
If you are looking to prepare for an exam, you care about your studies, which is why we want to help you have a high GRE score. The first thing you should have is the desire to study, and you already have it, so let’s go with everything; today, we are going to learn how to prepare for an examination and have the best results. Preparing for an exam is something that most students feel nervous about. Sometimes stress levels become so high that many people even get sick on the eve of their exams. Don’t let your nerves beat you! You have nothing to worry about; if you study properly, you can pass the exam you want with the best results.
1. Know What You Can Get Wrong
To achieve a high score, you have to ensure that you don’t get many questions wrong. In the verbal section, you can afford to miss just one question; however, you don’t have the same opportunity in the quantitative section. In the analytical writing part, you will need to score at least a six and a 5.5 score in the essay part to have an overall score of 6, which is no small feat. To achieve this feat, you need to understand what the readers are looking for.
2. Avoid distractions
Studying for an exam requires a lot of concentration, so you will need to avoid distractions at all costs. Close social networks, if possible, turn off the phone, the radio, and the television. We need you fully focused so you can pass the exam.
3. Create a study schedule
You have to define the study topics. If it is a single topic, divide it into the most important parts or most relevant subtopics and dedicate some study time to each one. If there are several topics, structure your schedule so that each one is assigned space and go in a logical order to understand them better and understand what the readers are looking for.
4. Be Motivated
Like we mentioned earlier, to pass any exam you need to be motivated and also to get a high GRE score, you will need to be seriously motivated to practice and pass the test. There is nothing like strolling to get the perfect score; it comes with high determination engendered by a motivation to hit your target. When you are preparing for your GRE test, you need to envision your goal to fuel your preparation.
5. Study in advance
Yes, we have heard these many times, but we don’t. Studying days before the exam will help the information have time to be encoded in your brain and therefore process more information, which will remain in your long-term memory; studying the day will cause you to be tired and with too much information which the brain does not process in its entirety, also, this information will be stored in short-term memory and will be easily lost. Check how much you should study and divide it by days to make it shorter.
6. Create useful material
When you study, map, draw, summarize or identify main ideas, this way, you can review more easily without having to reread the entire text or topic. It will facilitate your study and save you time. There are multiple teaching resources that you can use to study for the exam. One option is to summarize the most important topics, so you will not only review, but you will better assimilate the information. You can also create bibliographic files or even billboards inside your room with the most relevant data; seeing them during the day will help you retain information.
7. Practice what you have learned
This can be done individually or in groups. Create tests to identify how much you have learned and what you need to reinforce. By applying it with colleagues, you can get more information and answer questions.
Bonus tips take the exams:
- Calm down and be relaxed as much as possible.
- Breathe and feel allow your whole body be calm for 4 or 5 minutes, at least.
- Do not start quickly and read the sentences well.
- Please read every instruction and start with what you do best to build confidence.
- Take into account the time and know-how to do it.
- Take into account order, cleanliness, and avoid spelling mistakes.
- Review your answers when finished.
Conclusion
This is where we will stop; we already have shared how to prepare for an exam. Now it is your turn! Follow these steps to the letter, and we are sure that you will do great on your exam.