I had written this in an email to my friend in India back in August 2013. Some of this might be irrelevant by now.
GRE consists of 3 sections: a) Verbal, b) Quantitative, c) Writing. Within Verbal, broadly Reading Comprehension (RCs) and Sentence Completion (SCs).
I referred to these 3 books
a) Princeton, b) Kaplan , c) Barron’s
Why multiple books? All these companies analyze and interpret the GRE in their own way. Getting multiple perspectives helps you practice closer with the real-exam.
a)
For Verbal-tactics, I found Princeton the best for both RCs and SCs. Their tactics are easy to remember and solid. Barron’s has a good list of tactics (15-20 points), which are good to keep in mind, but too lengthy to apply step-by-step for every problem.
For Verbal-practice, Princeton is better, but the other 2 are good too.
b)
For Quantitative, Barron’s has around 100-150 pages of practice material, which is very comprehensive. Rest of the books have decent introductory material, but less challenging and somewhat repetitive
For Quantitative-practice, Barron’s > Princeton / Kaplan
c) Writing.
This is where the fun begins 🙂
I found the e.g. in Barron’s n Princeton as a good starting point for practice. After understanding the technique of approaching both the types of essays, I started practicing (roughly a month n half, before final exam). But soon I started experiencing writing block. I couldn’t freely frame my ideas into sentences. Although I could brainstorm through the ideas quickly, I found it difficult to frame it into sentences at a good pace. Then I came across this book, and practiced its techniques for 1-2 weeks, before jumping back into my writing practice, and could notice a significant difference in my speed and quality. This book essentially introduces the techniques for using our right-brain (creative side) and focus on the ideas instead of worrying too much about the rules of sentence-formation (which we learn waaaaay too much during our education in India).
After the initial leg-work, I started practicing 1-2 essays per day. Initially I started un-timed to feel free with writing, and later started practicing with 40 min, then 35, then 30 mins.
I find the writing section important
1) Its the first section of the exam, so if you do it well, it sets you up in a good mood.
2) Its predictable. Some arguments are weird and hard-to-figure out in the exam, but usually the topics are decent.
3) Its useful ! Writing for me was a laborious task before GRE exam. Now I use writing as a very powerful tool to communicate, and even brainstorm my thoughts / ideas. Not to mention that graduation school requires ton of writing, and this section is there in GRE for a reason.
4) Both writing+verbal together indicates your overall verbal reasoning skills. A good writing score can easily cover-up an otherwise average verbal score.
Exam Preparation Strategies:
1. Do something daily. Even if it means 1/2 hr – 1 hr in evening. Keeping tasks for weekend tends to make it more hectic and time-consuming (and less fun).
2. Practice more than understanding tactics / over-analysing test results. This exam is like learning how to drive a car. Getting into the drivers seat and using all the tools together while driving on a real road, and keep practicing to the point that all the tools are like your 2nd’ skin.
3 Start early, finish on time. Keep a window of 3-4 months, start and finish it off.
4. I did 15-20 days for each section, till 1.5 months, and then practiced all of them together for the next 1.5 months.
5. Verbal: Reading NY times daily for few months improved my critical-reading skills. NY Times articles are very well written (even the ones full of anti-Trump), covering the arguments on both sides, and giving a strong logical reasoning behind their arguments. GRE articles are far more verbose, but if you could dissect the arguments down and develop a clear map in the mind, then approaching questions is easier. Try to gather such good material, like the middle pages of Times-of-India (speaking tree etc.), and read them regularly. Online news articles tend to lack the material (and are crappy to say the least). Of course, since the exam is on computer, prefer online material than paper, later on in your preparation, but paper’s great to begin with.
For the test, focus on the tone of the argument (whether its critical or appreciative or neutral) and make sure that the answers to the questions follow that tone. This applies for both RC n SC. This is the most imp. tactic in the verbal section, pretty much the bottom-line.
For word-list, Princeton as a nice set of 5-7 lists. Note them down in your own sheets (1-2 lists per week) and keep glancing at them every morning.
Kaplan divides the words into categories, which is useful too.
6. Quantitative: Time management can be challenging if you try to solve everything down. Some questions tend to be verbose and vague too. So at times, switch gears and eliminate the options. Books focus a lot more on this technique (Amrikan style) than actually drilling down the math. So follow some of the techniques from the book.
7. Writing: While practicing, review your writing, and see if you could frame your argument in the right way. If you couldn’t, see if you were jumping across sentences and had a poor flow, or just missed the point completely or made the right point and provided wrong examples. Don’t focus too much on spellings n the accuracy of the English, it doesn’t matter as much.
Good luck with your preparations. For the books, buying 2nd hand works fine and saves some bucks. These books hardly change across editions.