My GRE experience

School and major: Purdue University, Electrical Engineering graduate

Scores:

1st attempt: V 154, Q 158, AW 4.5, total 312;

2nd attempt: V 156, Q 161, AW 3.5, total 317;

3rd attempt: V 159, Q 165, AW 3.5, total 324

Test dates:

1st 2024/5/25, 2nd 2024/6/15, 3rd 2024/8/4

[Notes & how I prepared for each section]

[[Vocabulary]]

Personally, I think vocabulary is the most important first step in preparing for the GRE, and it takes a lot of time. Text completion, reading, and sometimes even quant use words you'd never use day to day. So building up a solid vocabulary is a must for a high GRE score. For vocabulary, Li Shuo's (李碩) curated must-know word book from Wordgod (字神) helped me a lot. Besides collecting 1,000 of the latest high-frequency GRE words and giving you a study schedule, it has an extra 300 hard words for students aiming even higher. If you know every word in this book well, I believe your GRE vocabulary will be more than enough. On top of that, during my prep I always carried a small notebook to write down any word I didn't know or hadn't seen, whether in daily life or while doing questions, along with its definition, so it would stick in my head.

[[Text completion]]

I think text completion is the second most important part for a high score, because there's less reading and knowing your words well covers most of the questions. That doesn't mean you don't need to practice it, though. The hardest part of text completion is understanding the logic of the "test writer" and choosing words that build a sentence matching that logic. Li Shuo is excellent at teaching this: the class teaches techniques for reading the logic of a sentence and picking the right words, provides lots of practice material, and has an online question forum where students can ask questions, which made my text completion prep go very smoothly.

[[Reading]]

Reading may be a hurdle for test takers from Taiwan. The new, shorter GRE has shorter passages, but that also means you have less time to understand the passage and catch its tone and main points. If you misread the author's tone or miss a key point, you may not have time to go back and reread, and you end up reading under heavy pressure or just guessing. Teacher Ai (艾老師) at Wordgod teaches how to catch the main points faster and more accurately, and how to pick the answer most likely to be right when you're short on time. That helped me a lot in the exam and was the key to finally raising my Verbal score.

[[Quant]]

Quant is also very important for raising your GRE score. Since it only goes up to high school level, I believe most test takers from Taiwan won't have trouble with it, but for students applying to STEM grad programs, getting close to a perfect score can be a bit harder. Zhong Di (鍾迪) at Wordgod teaches lots of techniques for working out answers in less time and provides plenty of practice questions, which let me raise my quant score a lot in just three weeks.

[[Logic]]

Logic questions give you the least return on effort in the GRE, since you might spend ten minutes reading one and still get it wrong, but they matter if you want a very high GRE score. Zhong Di's logic class teaches techniques for picking the answer most likely to be right in a short time, which takes some of the pressure off these questions.

[[Writing]]

Personally, I think writing is the hardest to prepare for and the most unpredictable part, and because it's the first section of the test, how it goes can affect your mindset for the rest of the exam. Teacher Ai gives students the high-frequency prompts from recent years so they can prepare ahead, and teaches techniques for writing a clear, logical essay more completely and consistently.

[Study plan:]

At first I prepared on my own, buying prep books and practicing with free online resources. But after nearly 4 months and two official tests, I still hadn't reached my target score, so I chose Wordgod for my final push. Luckily it was the right choice: with Wordgod's help, my score made a breakthrough in just one month and I reached my target.

[Test center report:]

I took my 1st and 2nd attempts at Meijia (美加文教) near Taipei Main Station. The equipment and proctors were fine, but the surroundings were noisy, and car and scooter horns did bother me somewhat during the test.

My 3rd attempt was at the Fulbright Taiwan foundation (美國教育基金會) near Da'an MRT station. The equipment and proctors were fine and it was quieter than Meijia; recommended. The downside may be that it has fewer seats.

[Words of encouragement for other test takers:]

One of my prep books says, "The GRE tests how good you are at taking the GRE." I won't say that's wrong, but I think the GRE also tests your self-discipline and time management, which are among the skills a researcher or PhD student needs. It really does take a lot of time to prepare for, so I hope every test taker can settle down, give yourself some time, practice wholeheartedly, reach your target score and go on to great things!