Did you know that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GRE courses absolutely free? We’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.

One of the most common mistakes many students make on the Quant section of the GRE is to misread percent questions, especially ones that ask you to calculate percent change (i.e. increase, decrease, more, less, greater, discount, or profit). You can fix this issue with a bit of practice, but it requires some careful reading on your part. Read more

You can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GRE courses absolutely free. Crazy, right? Check out our upcoming courses here.

Think about your least favorite GRE vocabulary word. You know the one—every time you see it in your flashcards, you get that sinking feeling of dread. You always get this one wrong. You know it’s important, but for some reason, it just won’t stick in your head.

Okay, do you have a word in mind? Let’s conquer it—right here and now. Read more

Did you know that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GRE courses absolutely free? We’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.

Here’s a hard problem that I used to teach in session 1 of our GRE course (my poor students! This was a rough intro to GRE math.)

If you’d like to, give yourself a minute or two to try this (but don’t bang your head against it for too long). If you’re thinking wow, I have no idea what’s going on here—well, it’s a good thing you’re reading this. And even if you do feel comfortable with this problem, it might be worth reading further to see how the techniques used to solve this are more broadly applicable in GRE Quant. Read more

Did you know that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GRE courses absolutely free? We’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.

After working with thousands of students, I’ll admit: Reading Comprehension is my least favorite subject to teach. Why? Because unlike Quant, it doesn’t have concrete rules to apply, so it can be harder to find ways to help when students are struggling.

I have found, though, that many students who struggle with GRE Reading Comprehension aren’t actually struggling with the “reading” or the “comprehension” part (unless they struggle with English skills generally). No, the passages – though dense and often boring – are mostly ok. It’s answering the questions that’s a struggle!

RC questions can seem vague, and the answer choices can feel like a sphinx’s riddle. Often 2 or 3 answers choices may seem equally right, or maybe none of them seem right! So what should you do? Read more

Did you know that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GRE courses absolutely free? We’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.

Not as much as you might think. However, it’ll still take time, hard work, and a change in mindset. A lot of the learning you have to do to beat the GRE won’t look like what you’re used to. Sure, you’ll spend some time reading books and taking notes. But you’ll also need to study and think in ways that go against what you may have learned in school.

The GRE isn’t a perfect test. For instance, the research is split on whether it predicts how well you’ll do in graduate school. However, people who say that the GRE “doesn’t test anything” or “only tests how well you take tests” aren’t quite right, either. There are certain skills that, if developed, will consistently help you do well on the GRE. And these skills are learnable. One of them is the ability to use your content knowledge under pressure. Read more

I got an email from my cousin the other day—he told me that he’s interested in taking the GRE. Since I’m a GRE instructor with a perfect score on the test, he’d come to the right place. He wanted to know the basics: what first steps should he take? How much should he prep? How does the GRE even work? I gave him some pretty comprehensive advice, and my cousin found it so useful that I wanted to share it with you all. Read on below.

What is the GRE?

So, the GRE (Graduate Record Examination) is administered by ETS (Educational Testing Service), the same organization that administers the TOEFL and some other exams. The GRE is used by a lot of master’s programs, mostly in the sciences and humanities but also more recently for business school as well. It’s worth reading the overview here and here. While it costs $205 each time, I recommend planning to take the exam at least twice. Read more

Did you know that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GRE courses absolutely free? We’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.

“The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.” -Confucius

Recently, one of my students emailed me the following question. I imagine at some point in your GRE practice you’ve run into the same issue: Read more

Did you know that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GRE courses absolutely free? We’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.

You know what I love about GRE Discrete Quant problems? Specifically, multiple-choice Discrete Quant? The answer choices. Think about it: out of the infinite number of numbers in the universe, the GRE has already narrowed it down to just five possibilities. They’ve done almost all of the work for you. And that makes Discrete Quant a huge opportunity for People Who Hate Math. Read more

Did you know that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GRE courses absolutely free? We’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.

I am an incredibly anxious person. Like all of us, I worry about the big things (work, money, relationships, illness), but I also descend into fear when confronted with absurdly small things (the weird look the Dunkin’ Donuts cashier gives me when I ask for six sugars, the ominous clicking sound my toaster makes—WILL IT BLOW UP AND KILL ME???). Learning to manage my many anxieties is one of my main challenges on a day-to-day basis.

So I relate, strongly, to the students I work with who struggle with GRE anxiety. This anxiety manifests in a few common ways: Read more

Did you know that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GRE courses absolutely free? We’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.

If you ever took language classes in grade school or high school, you have an extra advantage when it comes to the GRE. Why? Because learning the GRE is a lot like developing fluency in a language. There are several reasons for this. Read more