<p>I just took the GRE and really bombed it. Last year, I took the GRE and got 660Q,480V,4.5W. I retook the exam today and got 540Q,410V. I have no idea what happened. I felt most of the questions were really hard. None of the words that showed up on the verbal section were in the Kaplan book. I'm so frustrated right now since the new scores will show up as part of the score report and grad programs will wonder what happened. I don't know what to do, other than taking the exam again, but I don't want to waste more money and end up with a low score again. Any suggestions? I'm currently a Master's student at a top university.</p>
<p>True, Kaplan book does NOT give you the complete list of every word (only…small portion of the word) therefore studying just Kaplan book will not be sufficient. </p>
<p>Go to this website: [GRE</a> Word Lists : Learn 1500 essential GRE words](<a href=“http://majortests.com/gre/wordlist.php]GRE”>GRE Word Lists : Learn 1500 essential GRE words | Major Tests)</p>
<p>There are 1500 GRE words there, which if I remember correctly, showed up about 50% of the time in the test. I got 580V that way, and English is my third language (didn’t speak English until 4 years ago). Most of my peers got 400-500.</p>
<p>If you master 1 word list (100) per day, in two weeks you will have mastered 1500 word plus whatever you’ve learned in that Kaplan book. If you’re diligent and master 4 word list in one day, you’ll master 1500 in 4 days, which is what I did. I spent 3-4 hours per day to study 4 lists and make an “exam” at the end of the day (5 hours after studying): I randomly pick 200/400 word, define it, and make a sentence, then check what percentile is correct, and work on those that are not.</p>
<p>Btw if you’re also non-native English speaker, most admission committee is more laid-back on your verbal score (I remember one of them said, roughly speaking “good” score for non-native English speaker is “good” score of native English speaker minus 100). But you definitely need to work on Quantitative, since I think the cut-off score is 700, native or non, except if you have exceptionally high Verbal (e.g. 770V/600Q).</p>
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<li><p>Use [GMAT</a> / GRE Prep Courses. Download 5 GMAT / GRE Practice Tests.](<a href=“http://www.800score.com%5DGMAT”>http://www.800score.com), which got my quantitative up by 100 points. They have 5 CATs and is very helpful and cheap.</p></li>
<li><p>I would focus more on tricks to answer the verbal questions as opposed to learning a massive quantity of words. I learned 500 and none of them showed up on the test. I did well because I learned prefixes, suffixes and tricks to solve verbal problems. I would still learn as many as you can, but make sure you learn how to actually do the section as well.</p></li>
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<p>I’m applying to psychology Ph.D. programs and I took the GRE exam studying from the Barron’s GRE book and off of the 350 word list and I only got 400 verbal and 770 quantitative. Taking it again tomorrow and hoping for the best!</p>
<p>What helped me quite a bit was doing the PowerPrep Verbal part over and over (you get some new questions each time) and make a list of all the words you do not know.</p>