Reddit reviews Barron's Essential Words for the GRE (Barron's GRE)

I'm going to let you in on a secret. I've also worked in exam prep. The vast majority of exam prep courses teach you a book. That's all. Nothing more. I tutored students for the SAT for years. Now I got the job because I scored high on my SAT I (1550 in the 1600 days), but we used two books: Barron's and the Official SAT Guide. When I had clients paying up to $180 an hour, 90% everything I taught was in those books. What you got by paying me in addition was someone who was also an expert on the book's techniques and could hand-hold you through them, and also spot what kind of mistakes you were making. But contentwise, books have just about everything you need. The list of things I taught that didn't come from the book were materials I made up myself. The only reason I got away with that was because I was with a small independent company that allowed me to do so. Big companies that offer courses (like Barron's and Caplan) don't allow it at all. Their tutors have a script that they teach from.

I took the GRE a few years ago and got a 1450 Overall + 6/6 Writing. What was my method? I bought this book, this book, and these flashcards. I worked both books cover to cover and all 500 flashcards until I'd mastered every single thing in them. Took a few hundred hours. If you do that, it works.

Hi there! I actually received my scores today, and I'm no paragon of standardized test taking, but here's what I did:

• First, check what is more important for your program. For instance, quantitative was more important than verbal for me, so I focused quite a bit on that.
  
  
• Take a test. www.ets.org has a free prep software that comes with 2 tests that mimic the actual GRE pretty well. Take one, see where you're lacking, set a plan and a goal. Downloading the software is mandatory in my opinion, and serves as an amazing free resource.
  
  
• Get a nice book. This depends on what you want to focus on. I used Barron's, which I found more useful for math than verbal. However, they also have a very nice book that teaches you 800 high frequency words for the GRE. I think studying vocab for this test should never be underestimated.
  
  
• Don't overdo yourself. Cramming is a terrible studying technique. I studied for 2 1/2 months, for instance. Set an hr or 2 per day to work on a section of math, and practice some words.
  
  
• Whenever you finish reviewing those topics you think you were lacking in (from the first practice), take another practice test.
  
  
• For writing, I had no idea how to approach it. There's some guides out there, and the topic pool can be found in the ETS website, but it's difficult to estimate results on that one.
  
  Finally, I would say register early. Many of my smartest friends did not do as well as they hoped the first time. The test can be very tiring, so allow yourself enough time to retake it (just in case).
  
  That's what I did, and my study process might have some flaws (of course), but hopefully something from there helps!
  
  Good luck with the process! It sucks, but I think it's worth it.