1,000 GRE Vocab Words List

[raj.karan.singh2]

Hi Team,

I've memorized the recommended 1,000 vocab words. I haven't reviewed the prefix and suffix list (please suggest if I should). I was under the assumption that if I familiarized myself with all 1,000 vocab words, I would have little trouble with the verbal questions. For each question, I assumed that there would be a mix of words from the recommended 1,000 vocab list and from outside of that deck. With that, I thought that even if I saw words that I didn't recognize, I would be able to infer if that unknown word could potentially be correct based on the other words that I did recognize. Unfortunately, I saw several questions with several words that I did not recognize. This concerns me. Am I missing something? Is this expected? Any suggestions to more effectively approach questions with vocab words that we've never seen?

I appreciate your time. Many thanks!

[tommywallach]

Hey Raj,

Oh no! There are probably a good 20,000 words that could conceivably show up on the test. It's impossible to memorize all the words that could show up on the GRE. It's impossible even to know what they are! (GRE doesn't publish the complete list of anything). The goal with studying vocabulary is just to learn as many words as you can. We offer 1000 of the ones that we believe are the most likely (from what we've seen in practice questions and real tests) to show up, but there are still many thousands more that could show up.

(By the way, if you're thinking right now Why would the GRE test something that it's impossible to definitively learn?, I totally agree with you!)

-t

[adeleylee]

where can I find the list of 1,000 words? thanks.

[tommywallach]

In our vocab book or flash cards!

-t