How Much Can You Expect Your GRE Score to Go Up with Studying?
As a GRE instructor, I get this question a lot. I’ll start by just sharing what I see, and note that this is just my experience: most students go up 5-8 points with study. That said, there are also students who go up 15 points, so I don’t mean the 5-8 to be read as a cap or threshold.
Now that that’s out of the way, I’ll state the obvious, which is that every person is different. So many factors play into this question, including where you start, how much you study, and how you study. But since you already know that, I want to unpack each of these in order to answer the question more specifically to you.
GRE Score Factor #1: Where’s your starting point?
It’s easier to gain points from a lower starting point than from a higher starting point. In other words, it’s going to be tougher for a person to move from 160 to 170 than for a person to move from 150 to 160.
You can think of it this way: When you’re starting from a lower score, there are many more opportunities for you to grab points—you can brush up on content (for example, algebra or geometry) and you can learn GRE test strategies. Once you recall the Pythagorean Theorem and rules about special triangles, however, you can’t do it again—there’s only so much math content you can review and relearn in order to increase your score. The closer you get to a perfect score, the fewer paths to get there.
Plus, people scoring over 160 tend to be missing harder questions. These questions are hard because they’re designed to be hard—significant research has gone into making them difficult to answer correctly. Once you’re inching up to the 95th+ percentile, you’re having to work at the highest level to gain even a single point.
Takeaway: It’s easier to gain points from a lower starting point than from a higher one.
GRE Score Factor #2: How much do you study?
I’ve come across a rule of thumb that for every five point score gain, you need to study 40 hours. Under this formula, for a ten point gain, you’d want to study 80 hours, and so forth. I don’t feel comfortable endorsing this formula given how widely circumstances and starting points vary from person to person, but I do agree that it’s important to expect to have to put in the work to gain points. Very few people study for a single weekend and get a ten point increase.
My own story—which I share because I think it’s pretty common—is that I studied for two months, took it, didn’t do as well as I hoped, studied for two more months, took it again, and did. This was starting with a Quant score in the mid 150s and a Verbal score in the low 160s. I reached a score of 164 Quant, 168 Verbal. So I gained about 18 points—not shabby, right? But also, it took me four months of regular study—not daily study, but at least four days a week for two hours or so a day, and then, at the end, more than that: about four hours daily during the final couple of weeks.
In terms of how much studying you should plan to do per day, most of the students I teach have jobs. They fit their study around their jobs and lives, so that means studying in the mornings, at lunch, or in the evenings. This is fine! You don’t have to quit your job, stop having a social or family life, or sacrifice a goat in order to do well on the GRE. Small bouts of study add up—20 minutes in the morning, 30 minutes at lunch, and 40 minutes when you get home from work add up to an hour and a half! That’s a very respectable amount of studying for one day.
No one’s situation is ideal, but if you have the option, I recommend starting to study four months before you absolutely must take the GRE in order to give yourself plenty of time to improve if you need it.
Takeaway: The longer the period of time you have to study the better, and regular, small increments add up.
GRE Score Factor #3: How do you study?
How you study matters: Twenty minutes of great study is better than two hours of mediocre study. We could spend hours unpacking what good study habits are (and do, in our tutoring sessions, if you want to go deeper into this), but as a rule of thumb, I’ll say: active beats passive.
Doing a problem is better than reading about how to do a problem.
Retrying a problem is better than reading a solution.
Reviewing a problem and writing down your takeaways from it is better than reviewing a problem and not writing down your takeaways.
Get the idea?
You want your brain to be actively working to make sense of the material—just like when you work out physically, you want to feel the struggle. If you aren’t feeling it, you probably aren’t studying well. But if you’re feeling the burn mentally? That’s a good sign you’re doing it right.
Takeaway: Good study means actively struggling with material rather than passively reading.
In sum, to maximize your score increase, you are smart to: 1) Plan to stick with GRE study for a while—months, if possible, 2) Do it regularly in small bursts that fit your schedule, and 3) Make sure your brain is flexing when you are studying (you should feel it working hard).
Then email me about your 20-point gain—I’d love to hear!
RELATED: How to Take a GRE Practice Test
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.
Mary Richter is a Manhattan Prep instructor based in Nashville, Tennessee. Mary is one of those weirdos who loves taking standardized tests, and she has been teaching them for 15 years. When she’s not teaching the LSAT or GRE for ManhattanPrep, she’s writing novels under the last name Adkins. You can find them wherever you buy books. Check out Mary’s upcoming GRE prep offerings here!