Okay, the title shouldn’t describe them as activities that teachers hate, so much as activities that this teacher hates. I don’t hate them because they’re completely useless, but I hate them because they distract well-meaning and hard-working students. Studying for the GRE is time-consuming and hard enough without inefficient strategies.

There are certain study strategies that exasperated students have in common. When a student tells me that they’re following one of these strategies, the rest of the story is usually, and my score isn’t going up at all. Here are, in my opinion, the four big ones, and their better alternatives.

Binging on problems

This is a big one. Stories that start with, I did all the problems in the book or I bought an extra set of problems and did every single one usually end with but I’m not getting any better!

It’s not that doing all the problems in the book is a bad thing, but chances are if you’re doing that many problems, you aren’t giving them the time they deserve. Doing problems is a good way to assess what you know, but it’s actually not a great way to get better at doing problems. That comes when you review what you’ve done.

Wonder if you’re doing too many problems with not enough review? Go back and do 10 problems you did last week, timed. Do you remember how to tackle them? If so, you’re probably reviewing enough. If not, you might want to tackled fewer problems in more depth in order to see a better payout.
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