Becoming a GRE Expert
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By virtue of being human, you are, in all likelihood, a Face Wizard.
You are incredibly good at identifying other people’s facial expressions. You can pick up on the curve of someone’s lip, or the furrow of a brow. You can detect the slightest blink, or the flare of someone’s nostrils. You notice the lightest intake of breath, or the dart of someone’s pupil.
From where do you derive this superhuman ability?
Not from intelligence! You don’t need to be a genius to be able to discern other people’s emotional states from the markings on their faces.
Rather, it is from the fact that, over the years, you have encountered so many unique and individual faces that they could fill a 5lb Book.
In psychology, when people become so practiced and fluent at a given subject that they know it inside and out, it is termed “expertise.” And decades of research on expertise can give us some clues about what it means to become a GRE expert.
There are two things that are necessary to become an expert at a certain topic.
Exposure
In the same way that the repeated encounter of human faces over many years has rendered you a Face Expert, so too will ongoing exposure to problems on the GRE.
Because repeated exposure is such a critical factor for becoming a GRE expert, this should give you clues about your study habits. First of all, make sure you leave yourself plenty of time between when you begin studying and when you plan to take the test. A general rule of thumb is you want to have spent 100 hours or more studying by the time test day rolls around. If you have a full time job, it means you can probably put in about 6-8 hours per week. That translates to about 16 weeks, or nearly four months, of preparation.
In addition, review is key. This means going back through your old practice tests and reviewing every problem, one-by-one. The aim is to achieve such a deep level of understanding with each problem that you could solve it in multiple different ways. By developing such an intimate understanding, you increase the likelihood that you will be able to draw parallels between that problem and new problems that you encounter. As you build a sense of familiarity with the different kinds of problems—and strategies for tackling them—that you will encounter on the test, you will become more and more confident and precise in your methods.
Engagement
The second element you need to build expertise is engagement. It is not enough to simply see problems over and over again. You need to care. Just as with faces, which we are emotionally engaged with because they are often socially relevant to us, you need to engage with math problems in such a way that you are can connect with them mentally rather than blindly moving from one problem to the next in a zombie-like fashion.
This means not always studying when you are tired or distracted after work. Make sure you save some time during the week to study when you are feeling alert and attentive.
In addition, try seeing the fun in the GRE. I realize this is like asking someone to see the fun in having a molar drilled. But there is something satisfying about cracking a tricky math problem, or learning a new vocabulary word, or reading an interesting passage. The better able you are to construe the GRE as a tricky mental puzzle that’s waiting to be solved, the more engaged you’ll be with the test and the more likely you are to absorb the material and stick to your goals.
Overall, the greatest hallmark of expertise, according to research in psychology, is an ability to make fine-grained discernments—and to draw parallels—between stimuli.
As you become a GRE expert, you will start to see commonalities between problems. You’ll encounter a brand-new Quantitative Comparison problem and realize that, while the numbers have changed, the underlying content, approach, and strategy are all identical to a hundred problems you’ve solved before. You’ll be tackling a Reading Comprehension question and notice that four out of five responses can be easily eliminated for the same reasons that you’ve seen on countless other problems.
With these ideas in mind, you will soon develop an intimate familiarity with the contours of the GRE—just like your familiarity with the contours of the human face.
Some More Readings on Expertise
Calvo-Merino, B., Ehrenberg, S., Leung, D., & Haggard, P. (2010). Experts see it all: configural effects in action observation. Psychological Research, 74(4), 400–6. http://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-009-0262-y
Gauthier, I., & Tarr, M. J. (1997). Becoming a “Greeble” Expert: Exploring Mechanisms for Face Recognition, 37(12), 1673–1682.
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Daniel Yudkin
is a Manhattan Prep instructor based in New York, NY. He has been a test prep instructor for over seven years and is currently in the final stage of a Ph.D. program in social psychology at NYU. In his spare time, Daniel writes popular science articles about psychological phenomena and is a devoted jazz pianist and vocalist. Check out Daniel’s upcoming GRE prep offerings here.