difficulty of gre exam and how to improve verbal score

[123aster]

hi,
i would like to know if the real gre test is harder than that of practice test. I'm struggling with my verbal and have my exam in 1 week .I'm using the Manhattan 5lb book apart from ets official guide, recently took the practice test and scored a 156 in Manhattan one while in power rep scored 145 there was i huge discrepancy. I'm having difficulty dealing with text completion and rcs ,for the vocab i used the mgre vocab list given at the back of the book. can u please suggest me ways to improve my score i need at least a 160 in verbal since im a science graduate and also is 1 week sufficient to improve my score from 145 to 160
kindly waiting for your reply,
thank you

[tommywallach]

Hey 123aster,

Well first off, there's no way to go from a 145 to 160 in a week. Unfortunately, that's just an unrealistic expectation. As for the score discrepancy, our experience has been that our test mimics the real test very well (i.e. we don't get a lot of complaints such as this one). What that means is either 1) You had a really bad day on your second test or 2) You had a really good day on your first test. You'll need to take more practice tests to know which is the case (likely a combination of the two.

As for learning more vocabulary, there are plenty of other resources out there (from free websites to books) for expanding your vocabulary even further. Feel free to dip into them.

If you have a 156, it's possible to jump to a 160 in a short period of time. But if you're really closer to 145, it simply won't happen. Start studying for that second test!

-t