There’s something very alluring about practice tests. They feel productive. They seem like they’re giving you an upper hand on “the real thing”. And there’s always that secret hope that this time you’ll knock it out of the park and you can finally stop studying.

Don’t get me wrong; I love practice tests. I love them as a teacher, because they help me assess my students’ progress. And I love them as a student, because I know where I stand. But more and more, I find myself having to caution students about using practice tests effectively.

Often times, I see students using practice tests in ways that are completely unproductive. Since your time is precious and you ideally want to get the most improvement possible for whatever time you invest, I’d like to give you my two cents on using practice tests effectively.

Take a test before you start studying.

This is one practice test that’s completely efficient and insanely valuable, and yet it’s the one students are most likely to skip. Many students skip the practice test at the beginning of a course or before they start studying. Sometimes, they skip it because they are afraid of what the results will be. Other times, they know the result won’t be good enough for their school of choice, so it seems pointless. I also often hear students say that they don’t want to “waste” one of their practice tests until they have started studying.

I feel comfortable saying that, without exception, these are all bad reasons to skip the first practice test. You have to know where you’re starting so that you can know what’s working. Taking a practice test at the beginning of your studies will give you a baseline from which to measure your progress and an invaluable exposure to the exam to frame your studying. It wouldn’t be a waste even if you couldn’t ever take it again – but since you can, and since you’re likely to take it differently after weeks or months of studying, there’s absolutely no reason to skip the first practice exam. (If you’ve very recently taken a real exam, that’s a perfect substitute for an initial practice test.)

Take tests in a real way.

If you have to caveat your test score by saying anything that starts with, “I got XYZ score on my practice test, but…”, you’re not using your practice tests as efficiently as you could be. So let me lay it out as directly as I can.
Read more

Deciding whether to take a GRE prep course is tough. Prep courses can be expensive and take a lot of time. So the question is, is a GRE prep course worth it?

You might think that because I teach and GRE prep course and work for a GRE prep course company, my answer would be a certain “yes”. But in reality, it’s a resounding and certain “maybe”.

Helpful, right? Sorry. But I firmly believe that a prep course is incredibly valuable for some people but not for others. Here are the factors I usually encourage students to consider in deciding if a prep course will be worthwhile for them.

How much improvement do you really need?

It’s a good idea to take a reputable practice exam to see where your scores currently stand. Manhattan GRE offers a free practice test that you can use to see where you are right now. Then, check in with the programs to which you plan to apply and see what score would make you a competitive applicant there.

If you only need minimal improvement, or you only need improvement in one area, you might be able to do that on your own! Either way, you’ve got to know where you are starting and where you need to end up before you can make an informed plan.

How likely are you to stick to a schedule on your own? Read more

We all have a way of learning that works best for us. Most of us are able to learn by reading, writing, listening, speaking, and doing: the world pretty much requires that we do all five of these. But, just the same, most of us are better learners in some ways than in others.

Fortunately, when it comes to studying for the GRE, you can do a lot to design your own way of studying to take advantage of your strengths. First, you have to know what your strengths are. You may already know. If you don’t, think back to your time in high school or college. Which ways of studying were effective for you? Did you find homework to be pointless, but learn a lot in class? You might learn best by listening. On the other hand, if you found it very helpful to take notes while studying, you might learn best by writing. If you aren’t sure, you can take an online quiz such as this one to give yourself some guidance in the right direction.

I suggest that you try to combine more than one learning style in your studying – research has shown that this improves learning. I also suggest that you make sure to incorporate the learning style that works best for you.

So what are some ways to study in each learning style?

Learn by reading

• Obviously, the first piece here is to read the assigned reading in your homework.
• You might find that reading explanations of problem solutions really helps to cement things for you.
• Reading online forums can help you link concepts together.
• Doing a Google search for vocab words and reading them in context can help those who learn by reading to form strong connections for the words.
• Reading different solutions to a tough problem might bring you lots of insight.

Learn by writing Read more

When it comes to the GRE, your mindset can make a big difference. The test is long. The test is hard. The test is fast. The people who make the GRE are experts in creating the feeling of, “I know that I know how to do this, but I just can’t seem to figure it out.” There are people who say that one of the problems with tests such as this on is that they aren’t accurate because they have pressure and unpredictability. That would be right if the test just wanted to find your understanding of vocabulary and mathematics, but that’s not all they want to test. They want to test how you deal with pressure. They want to test how you deal with unpredictability. They want to test how you reason, above everything else. So all those added difficulties are fair game. They aren’t in the way of your test; they are your test.

That’s what makes your mindset so important. You might be able to convince me that mindset doesn’t have anything to do with your ability to do math (although I disagree) or to remember vocabulary (I still would disagree, but maybe not as strongly). But you won’t be able to convince me that mindset has nothing to do with how you handle pressure, unpredictability, and reasoning.

So what’s a good mindset? And how do you get it? Here are some tips.

Crisis mode versus panic mode

I hope you haven’t been in a lot of emergency situations, but I’m sure you’ve had at least one opportunity to see both crisis mode and panic mode demonstrated in real life. Picture a situation where John is preparing lunch and cuts his hand severely. He calls for his wife, Kelly. In panic mode, Kelly would see the blood and scream, “Are you okay? Are you okay? What happened?” She would go to find her keys to drive to the hospital, then decide to call the doctor, then get mad because she couldn’t find the keys, then start yelling. Now picture Kelly in crisis mode. She appears calm, although she talks rapidly and with direction. “John, sit down and put pressure on your hand with this towel. I’m going to drive you to the hospital. Hand me your keys.”

Both modes are normal responses to a problem, but the chief difference is that crisis mode works, and panic mode doesn’t. Not only does panic mode not help, but it also hurts.

You have to approach your test in crisis mode. Focus, take in the information you see, assess the situation, make a decision, and follow through. The good news is that crisis mode can be artificially created until it becomes a habit. In other words, fake it ‘til you make it. Read more

You already know how to learn—you’ve been learning all your life. The problem is that the way you learn best for school is often not the best way to learn for the GRE.

At the first level, you’re learning all of the “basics” (note that I do not mean “easy” when I say “basics”): the facts, the rules, the vocabulary, the question types and how they work. That first level is necessary but it will only get you so far. As you progress through this material, you’ll need to start adding in a second level of understanding—and most people don’t make this leap.

Before we start, if you haven’t yet read What the GRE Really Tests, go do so.

Why do I need a “Second Level” of learning?

When was the last time you read a GRE problem and had no idea where to start? When was the last time you did a GRE problem, checked the solution, and thought, “What? I didn’t even know they were talking about that!”

Notice that I didn’t ask whether you’ve experienced these things. We all have, even those of us who score in the 99^th percentile. It’s just a matter of time until we hit a question like this. Your goal is to maximize the amount of time until it happens again. : )

Okay, so what IS the “Second Level”?

This second level of study involves learning how the GRE test writers put questions together, including the right and wrong answers. You can learn how to take the test by analyzing the way these questions are put together.

Read more

The GRE General Test is not a math test. Nor is it a vocabulary test. Well, okay, you do have to know about these topics in order to get a good score. But this test is really testing your executive reasoning skills.

The term might be unfamiliar, but you already have—and use—these skills every day. Here are some examples:

You arrive at work in the morning and think about all of the things that you could do that day. You can’t get it all done, so which things will have to wait until this afternoon, or tomorrow, or next week? Which one thing should you start working on first?

You are faced with a list of 20 unread emails (or, if your inbox is more like mine, about 80). Which ones do you read first? The oldest ones? The ones from your boss? The ones marked urgent? Are there some that you won’t even click on right now because you know, from the sender’s name or from the subject line, that those emails aren’t very important? (And how did that one spam message get through the filter?)

You have a choice between working on Product X or Project Y. Project Y will result in about 5% more revenue to the company, but Project Y will also take 50% longer. Which do you do?

None of those decisions are easy ones (and many would likely require more information than I gave in the little scenario). This complex decision making is exactly what a good executive needs to be able to do well—and this is what the test writers and graduate schools actually care about.

The math problems, vocab questions, and reading passages on the General Test are ultimately tools to allow the exam writers to test you on your decision-making ability. The Subject Tests are the ones that assess you more on your domain-specific expertise.

How does that help me take the test?

Read more

I have a GRE class that’s right now winding down to our couple final classes, and the first panicked email has just come in. This always happens in GRE (and GMAT and LSAT) classes as the end approaches. People start freaking out, because they’re studying, and they’re learning things, and they know more than they did before “ but the score isn’t budging. Or if it is budging, it’s not increasing enough! Or worst, it’s going down! And they start to lose hope. But they’re just in the dip.

The Studying Dip

When Seth Godin wrote about The Dip, he was talking about the time in a business where you feel like things will never improve, but they’re just about to get better. He was trying to quantify, or at least clarify, when you should stick with it despite the obstacles, versus when you are just on a steady downward streak.

When we talk about the dip, we’re talking about that time in studying for a standardized test when you’re working, and working, and working, and you wonder, Is this working?

The Bad News

Let’s start with the bad news first. The bad news is that if what you’re doing isn’t making your score go up, after a number of weeks, you have to change it. But this section is very short because that’s the only bad news.

The Good News

Read more

I just read a really fascinating post on the New York Times’ Well blog. We’ve known for a long time that exercise has a whole host of good benefits, including benefits associated with memory. Two recent studies have delved even deeper into how this works.

How does exercise help memory?

In the blog post, New York Times journalist Gretchen Reynolds details the two new studies¾one conducted on humans and the other conducted on rats.

In the human study, elderly women who already had some mild cognitive impairment were split into three groups. One group lifted weights, the second group engaged in moderate aerobic exercise, and the third group did yoga-like activities.

The participants were tested at the beginning and end of the 6-month exercise period and the results were striking. First, bear in mind that, in general, we would expect elderly people who are already experiencing mental decline to continue down that path over time. Indeed, after 6 months, the yoga group (our control group) showed a mild decline in several aspects of verbal memory.

The weight-training and aerobic groups, by contrast, actually improved their performance on several tests (remember, this was 6 months later!). In particular, these groups were not losing as much of their older memories and they even became faster at some spatial memory tests involving memorizing the location of three items. In other words, the women were both better at making new memories and better at remembering / retrieving old ones!

Read more