Hi all,

I took NEW GRE 3 days back and my score is 336!

Split up Verbal Section – 166
Quant Section – 170
Expecting 5.5 or 6.0 in my essays.

This is my second attempt. Mine was an average score in my first attempt. In my first attempt I performed terribly.
I was completely demotivated after seeing my scores. I am working as a Senior System Analyst in Bangalore. I have
6 Yrs of experience. I’m an electronics and communication engr and always wanted to pursue MS in a top school.

The new GRE is tough from all the angles. Text completion choosing
3 answers from 9 answer choices and even if one choice goes wrong and 2 correct the whole question becomes wrong.
Select many RC and problem solving, select in passage questions are all tough. Only solace is the calculator.
Thanks to the GreBible, I performed well this time. GreBible had tough questions in its practice tests, so actual
GRE was easy for me.

NEW GRE tests three things:

1. Your basic intelligence (in Quant and Reading Comprehension)

2. Your speed of responding (that’s why the time limit is kept…and so, many of you who are practicing for the
GRE must be finding it difficult)

3. How well you perform under pressure?

I also used Barrons and Kaplan tests and bigbook. All these material are no longer useful as ETS had tremendously
increased the difficulty level of questions especially the quant and the reading comprehension questions.

If you are pretty clear in the above things then a good score is not that difficult.

First and foremost suggestion – Don’t get tensed; remain cool and calm. Sometimes the only difference
between a good score and a bad score is your mental strength. Just chill. No worries, no tension. Talk to yourself.
Tell yourself that you can do it. If you win over your tension, then GRE is a piece of cake.

Second thing – practice is the key to success. Give as many practice
tests as possible. Grebible and Powerprep are a must. You can also try out Arco.

Practice tests and the CAT tests in grebible are excellent. The difficulty level is very very high and that’s the
reason why I was able to score much in the verbal and quant sections.

If you go without giving practice tests, that too practice tests with
high level of
difficulty, your chances of good scores are negligible.

The main advantage for me was that I got 4 text completion and 2 sentence equivalence questions straight from grebible
practice tests. These questions were within my fist 10 questions. That boosted my gre score. Thank god! else I
would have been sitting with computers and doing silly things in my office.

Softwares used:

  • Powerprep
  • Grebible

PowerPrep gives you the exact score which you will be your GRE, plus or minus 5-10. Your scores from powerprep
will be an exact replica of your actual GRE score. 

I had no time to study for gre as my work is very hard. I used to come home only at 11 or 12 or even 2 in the night.
But it was a passion for me to study MS. Initially it was very tough for me to find time to prepare. I prepared
very slowly for gre. I started with Barron’s wordlist. After completing them when I took a diagnostic test, I
was shocked at the results. Then one of my friend suggested Gre Vocabulary Bible from grebible. The software was
cool. If you do not have GreBible for preparation, your GRE scores will suffer for sure.

Some General Tips:

1. Complete the math review in barron’s with the exercises and also the one given by ETS

2. Do math exercises in grebible. I found grebible math to be toughest of all. I purchased GreBible and it is by
far the best one yet.I highly recommend that if you are only going to get one software for GRE, GreBible is it.

3. On the day of test, free yourself from driving to the test center. Take a cab or better still, ask someone to
drop you.

My GRE scores on practice
tests in the order I took, if it helps anyone:

PowerPrep1 GRE Score – Q – 170, V – 165
Princeton 1 GRE Score – Q – 165, V – 160
GreBible1 GRE Score
– Q – 170, V-166
GreBible2 GRE Score – Q – 170, V-168
GreBible3 GRE Score – Q – 168, V-165
GreBible4
GRE Score – Q – 166, V-163
GreBible5 GRE Score – Q – 170, V-166

As you guys can clearly see. Powerprep and GreBible GRE scores exactly reflect the actual gre scores

Links :

www.grebible.com (Excellent Software. Saved me, After my
initial poor first attempt. )
www.testmagic.com (Excellent Site)

www.syvum.com (Lot of practice tests. Outdated only old gre practice tests)

www.gre.org(Complete their practice Questions first)

Thanks guru for sharing his experience.
If you would like to contact , you can email him: guru.swaminathan1980[at]yahoo[dot]com