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 have been fortunate enough to sit on a grad school admissions committee as part of my training as a graduate student in social psychology. This view from the inside gave me some interesting information about what the GRE means to the most important people: the ones reading your application.

To start off, it’s important to understand exactly how admissions committees work. Admissions committees, especially for small programs, are not as organized or as consistent from year to year as you might think. This is because there is often a high degree of turnover in the grad school admissions committee staff from year to year. While with business schools there may be a fully-staffed admissions committee with only a handful of academics sitting in, in other programs the admissions committee consists entirely of professors and graduate students, many of whom are serving for their first time. What this means is that there is no secret formula for a winning application, since the committees change drastically from year to year.

However, there are certain aspects of your application that are sure to get you noticed by the grad school admissions committee. 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.

I get dozens of questions from students every week about when and how to schedule their tests. A lot of the basic information on scheduling your GRE can be found at the ETS website, but here’s all of the advice you won’t find there: 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.

There’s nothing wrong with making GRE math errors because the problem is too hard. That’s just the way that the test is designed—there are Quant questions on the GRE that will challenge even the mathematical geniuses among us. However, it’s much more frustrating to miss a problem that you could’ve gotten right, just because you made a silly mistake. Try out the following tips to cut down on careless GRE math errors. 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.

Math is unavoidable on the Quantitative sections of the GRE. But it isn’t all about math. By leveraging your strengths — and learning just a couple of ultra-simple math rules — you can gain the advantage over certain Quant problem types, even if you’re more of a Verbal person. Here’s how to apply that idea to Data Interpretation. 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.

Let’s do a GRE Discrete Quant experiment. This is one I do with all of my GRE classes and tutoring students. Grab a piece of paper, a pen, and a stopwatch (or use the stopwatch function on your mobile device).

When you’re ready, click “start” on the stopwatch and begin the following multiple-choice GRE Discrete Quant problem… Read more

Can’t get enough of Neil’s GRE wisdom? Few can. Fortunately, you can join him twice monthly for a free hour and a half study session in Mondays with Neil.

Sorry to hear your score isn’t improving yet. That’s the ugly nature of standardized testing; it’s designed to give you the same score over and over again. You’ve spent a lot of time and effort learning a bunch of new things, but on practice tests, the results aren’t showing up yet. Or even worse, after six weeks of hard work, your score took a major nosedive. That’s okay. You’re not alone. Many, if not most, of our students experience a drop in scores on their second test, and may not see an improvement until test 4 or 5. It happens to lots of people. Don’t be discouraged. You can make your score better. Read on. 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 like to think of GRE problems as belonging to three categories: good, bad, and ugly. These categories are a little different for each test taker, but everyone can use them to make better decisions on the GRE. 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.

Do you remember, when you took exams in high school or college, being allowed to bring a one-page ‘cheat sheet’? I always spent days putting those cheat sheets together in my tiniest handwriting, summarizing an entire semester’s notes on a single page. The funny thing is, by the time I took the exam, I almost never needed to look at the cheat sheet I’d created. After spending all of that time creating it, I had practically memorized my notes. So, even if you can’t bring a GRE Quant Cheat Sheet to the test, you can still benefit from creating one. Synthesizing your notes and thoughts on a single page will give you the ‘big picture’ view of a topic—and will teach you what you do and don’t know. 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.

“When I See This, I Will Do This”: A GRE Study Tool

“I know all of the rules, but I’m nowhere close to my goal score.”

“When I study, I understand everything right away. But when I took the actual GRE, I couldn’t make it happen.”

“I never know what to do when I see a Quant problem for the first time. If somebody tells me how to set the problem up, I can do it perfectly, but I can’t get started on my own.”

“I get overwhelmed by Verbal questions. I’ll think that my answer makes sense, but then I’ll review the problem and realize that there were a dozen different things I didn’t notice.” Read more