GRE Success Story – Christina
Few things make us instructors happier than getting that glowing email from a student who has just achieved his or her goal score. While these students tend to have certain traits in common (a reasonable timeline, diligent studying, etc.), we’ve also noticed that successful students take many different paths to reach their goals.
Recently, the MPrep Instructor Manager team set out to investigate what habits and practices lead to successful outcomes for our students, with the hope of inspiring others just setting out on their test prep journeys. We asked our instructor pool to nominate students, and then reached out to these students to conduct brief interviews.
Today, we’ll be sharing one story from a recent student, with the hope that we’ll be able to continue sharing more of these profiles in the future.
Name: Christina
Grad school plans: MBA and MPP programs
Christina started an MPrep GRE course in January 2019. However, while the course was running, she didn’t have much time to study beyond completing some of the assigned homework. She began studying in earnest in early May, a month before her June test date.
To prepare, she found that a live class, where she could discuss concepts and problems with other students, was really helpful. She also drew heavily on the MPrep Strategy Guides and 5lb Book. At the end of each study session, she’d tape a sticky note above her desk with 3-5 things to work on in her next session. Once she felt she’d mastered something, she took it down (and if she then took a practice test and realized it was still a weakness, she’d tape it back up). She found this made it a lot easier to feel motivated the next time she sat down to study, especially because it prevented her from feeling discouraged or overwhelmed by the amount of work there was to do.
One major challenge she confronted was feeling like she’d done enough preparation. At times, she felt that no matter how much she worked on a concept, she could still be surprised by how that concept showed up in actual questions. To combat this, she found it was really useful to do large groups of problems where she just spent 30 seconds starting each question. This allowed her to see a broad range of problem types without having to invest hours and hours. She found this strategy most helpful toward the end of her studying, when she’d already covered a lot of the core content and strategy.
In terms of advice for current students, she’d encourage students not to be afraid of practice tests! She found these intimidating (and a bit discouraging) at first, but pushed through that feeling. In hindsight, she wishes she’d taken practice tests earlier in the process. She says that “the most important thing is to keep at it and to reflect fully on what you learn from each test.” She found that quality of review was even more important than quantity of time spent.
She also recommends a study schedule comprised of consistent, short sessions, instead of marathon cramming sessions. She feels that, in hindsight, doing an hour a day for a longer stretch of time (maybe 3-6 months) would have been ideal. However, ultimately her one-month timeline worked out!
Don’t forget 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.