GRE C.P.R.: How to Resuscitate Your Score
Several times a week my students ask me, “What’s the best way to study?” They’re worried that they’re doing things the wrong or slow way, or they’re working hard but not making the progress they want. I will say this: If you’re putting in the hours, the results will come, maybe not as quickly and easily as you’d like, but you’ll get there. However, I have discovered two common “types” of students who put in a lot of time and hard work with less than satisfactory results:
The “students-but-not-practitioners”
These are students who diligently “study”—they read every book and show up to every class—but who don’t do enough practice and therefore can’t apply what they learn quickly and accurately. It’s like reading books about baseball as your only preparation for a Major League tryout. You have to pick up the ball!
The “practitioners-but-not-students”
These are people who “practice” thousands of questions, but never learn anything from them. They rarely learn any new strategies, and never redo questions to fix their mistakes. They simply read explanations without really mastering the foundations behind them.
What both of these types miss, and what most students of mine miss, is the real opportunity to change: by reviewing their work and redoing problems again and again until they’ve achieved real mastery. One must strive to be both a student and a practitioner in order to conquer the GRE.
So, what’s the cure? It’s finding the right balance through C.P.R.
- Acquire new content knowledge (C) and skills
- Practice (P) enough to play that knowledge in various contexts
- Take enough time to review (R), redo, and reflect on your right and wrong answers in order to develop confidence in your approach and fix your mistakes.
Next time you sit down to work on the GRE, divide the time you have into three chunks. Suppose you have an hour: Dedicate 20 minutes to content, 20 minutes to practice, and 20 minutes to reviewing.
Content
LEARN something new. Add new content to your brain. The best source for content is one of our Strategy Guides. Sit down and work through one chapter or even just a part of one chapter. Make mnemonics for a handful of vocabulary words. Memorize a few math rules or formulas. Learn the strategy for a particular question type. Make flashcards. Take notes. Compile cheat sheets. You should some of this time quizzing yourself on content from previous days, so everything stays fresh and useable.
Practice
Now, put what you’ve learned into practice. Work the questions at the end of each Strategy Guide chapter. Do questions out of the Official Guide or the 5-lb book. (Should you do them timed or untimed? Your call. Time yourself less as you’re beginning to study. Time yourself more as you get closer to the real test.) Take a practice test to figure out what you need to master next.
Review
Redo, reflect – but don’t stop there! Reviewing and redoing are the best ways to really make a change in your score. Why is cellist Yo Yo Ma so wonderful at that Bach concerto? Because he’s played it thousands of times. Simply glancing at an explanation is not sufficient. Sure, check your answers, but before you look at an explanation try to do the problem again. Look up vocabulary words. Try to piece together the best strategy yourself from your notes or Strategy Guides. Do the problem again using a different strategy (Can you plug in smart numbers? Use the answers instead of algebra? Ballpark? Eliminate and guess?) Do the problem enough times that you’re confident you could ace this question in half the time. Rewrite the question and change the numbers or the parameters to see how your solution changes (what if the question didn’t say, “y is an integer?”) Also, before you close your books for the day, be sure to take some time to reflect on what you’ve learned; take notes on the content areas you need to cover next time and the kind of practice you need to do.
Then take a break, and when you’re ready start the cycle all over again…
You can always start the cycle wherever you want. Do some practice to warm up, review those questions, and let them guide you to content. Or start by reviewing an old practice test to decide where you need to go…
So, there’s your answer: The best way to study is to perform C.P.R. Now go resuscitate that score!
For more about reviewing your work, check out this great article.
When not onstage telling jokes, Neil Thornton loves teaching you to beat the GMAT and GRE. Since 1991, he’s coached thousands of students through the GMAT, LSAT, MCAT, and SAT, and trained instructors all over the United States. He scored 780 on the GMAT, a perfect score on the GRE, and a 99th percentile score on the LSAT. Check out Neil’s upcoming GRE course offerings here.