[My High-Scoring GRE Experience]

School and major: NTU Nursing, minor in Philosophy, 5th year

Scores: V 157, Q 167, AW 3.0

Test date: 2024/5/5

[Prep Notes & Methods by Section]

[Vocabulary]

Vocabulary is the toughest, hardest part of the GRE, with no way around it. It's also why the GRE feels several times harder than tests like the TOEFL or IELTS. I learn English through heavy exposure: when I'm scrolling YouTube to unwind, the words and listening I come across are all TOEFL level. But the words on the GRE are so obscure and rare that you only see them in advanced academia. Unless you have an unusual background that puts you in contact with them, the only way to handle vocabulary is really to take a class. And if your vocabulary isn't big enough, no handy trick will help you with reading or text completion. Teacher Li Shuo's (李碩) handouts and word bank were a huge help. Pick them up and study them whenever you can, even as bedtime reading. The key is to read the words out loud; it helps you remember them. Don't just memorize words on their own; make sure you can recognize them in sentences. If you can, make up a little story for each word.I recommend vocabulary.com. Teacher Li Shuo also recorded explanations for every word that you can listen to, though personally I found the delivery a bit flat: one or two are fine, but a whole bunch gets boring. In short, find ways to see wild words in the wild, moving around in their natural habitat, instead of just grinding through a vocab book.

[Text Completion]

Text completion is a really satisfying question type, because once you've learned your words, it's where you can feel your progress most clearly. The questions read like academic papers; every topic feels like a sentence lifted from a research report, a news story or literary criticism. Again, the words are rare and many of the sentences are long and complex, so intuition and a feel for the language usually won't help. Use the matching method to pair the options into groups of similar words, and you'll get most questions right.

Text completion is also the question type with the most tricks, and I think a text completion class is the best value for money. Don't doubt the moves that look like shortcuts: I tested them, and they're usually more reliable than intuition.

[Reading]

It feels like an extension of the vocabulary questions. Again, if your vocabulary isn't big enough, almost nothing else matters. You can look at what the question asks before reading the passage, rather than reading every single word, which wastes a lot of time. The sentences are long and awkward, which is annoying, but calmly working through the key long sentences is usually worth it; there's enough time. Also, it helps to know a bit about American culture and to read as wide a range of topics as you can, or some subjects, like American literature, may be hard to follow.

[Quant]

It's middle-school-level math, and not especially hard middle-school math at that. It's mostly about concepts, which is a bit different from education in Taiwan. After all, Americans don't memorize multiplication tables, and you get a calculator during the test, so the questions focus on flexible thinking and connecting ideas. If middle-school math is no problem for you, take a quick look at the question types and the English math terms, and focus on getting used to the problem-solving logic. There are no trick questions, and you don't need to get hung up on question types. It takes a little while to get used to, but once you're familiar with it, it should be easy for most Taiwanese test takers.

[Logic]

Lots of Taiwanese test takers groan about this part, but it was fine for me, since I'm half a philosophy major. Spotting false premises, possible fallacies in reasoning and strange consequences is basically my everyday training, so this twisty logic hardly ever stumps me. My advice for everyone else is that this probably isn't something you can build in a day or two. I can tell that people in Taiwan rarely get any logic training growing up, and this is exactly the kind of question where everything makes sense when the teacher explains it, but your head spins when you try it yourself. You need to think these through slowly on your own, so please practice a lot and think a lot. Of course, if it really isn't working, keep your focus on vocabulary and text completion, and don't lose the big picture over a small part.

[Writing]

Possibly the hardest section to prepare for. Mainly, people in Taiwan don't get much training in producing arguments, and the time is very short. Luckily, the official website has a question pool, so find time to go through every prompt in it. It looks huge, but a lot of the questions repeat, so you can plan your rough arguments in advance.

[Study Plan]

I followed the teacher's schedule. Before this, I was at about a TOEFL 96 level. I prepared for about three months, mostly on building vocabulary. I memorized words every day, did every assigned question at least once, kept the vocab book by my bed and read one section every night before sleep, and right before the test I brought the text completion workbook to study. If your vocabulary is big enough, you barely need to study reading and logic, and for quant you just need to get a bit familiar with the terms.

[Test Center Report]

The Meijia (美加) test center is in an alley not far from the Wordgod (字神) building. Don't trust your navigation app: the actual location is a bit farther toward Wordgod than where the app points.

[Words of Encouragement for Other Test Takers]

Once your vocabulary is up, there's nothing to fear. Taking the test on a computer for the first time may make you a bit nervous, but there's more time than you'd think.

[Score Report]