GRE preparation for students

Hello readers, I hope you had a glorious week and not even close to as busy as mine.

In our last article, we have seen a whole branch of discussion and analysis about what-is-what and what-is-not regarding the acceptance of GRE. Today I am going to discuss the way to prepare for GRE, some suggested approaches from various sources and my own experience, for a student.

Being a student, a person has a lot of possibilities and opportunities ahead of him. It is said that, one right/wrong decision in one good/bad moment can turn a person’s life completely good/bad. Student life happens to be one of those times when many of those good/bad moments (for taking good/bad decision and turning life around) come and go. Therefore, if we require to make a life-changing decision that will either be an asset for the rest of our lives or simply ravage our lives in a totality, student life is the best time to do so.

A student’s preparation for GRE happens to be the best one among all other groups of people including job-holder, unemployed or any others as such. Because students get the most free-times among all the groups of candidates to prepare for GRE in a proper way. Therefore, the way a student should follow a schedule, that should be unique from any other group.

General traits of a students & their relevance in analyzing GRE preparation

In my life, I have seen several types of students.

First type of students are those to whom study is everything. Their level of focus and dedication happens to be off the chart.
Second type of students are solely career oriented. They only study for a job, not for learning and/or self development.
Third type of students, they do not care whether they do good or bad in either their academic career or in their general life.
Fourth type, they are called the drop-outs. Either for not being able to handle the pressure of academic life or for having a better prospect than that of an University Education, they think the continuation of education unworthy of their time.
Fifth and the most interesting type of students are those who has a clear concept about their course and syllabus, still they cannot score a good academic result. This may be for their lack of presentation skills or their notion that an academic result is nothing but a paper and number, and the real result comes in the real world.

Now let us analyze these traits one by one. The first trait students are usually attentive to their GRE preparation (those who want to sit for it) and also do well in them. The reason being their ultra-focused mind and its utilization. The second type would go for GRE, but the reason is only one, and that is NOT to develop and/or test their analytical and cognitive ability. It is just to go abroad to earn in Dollars and Pounds or in Euros. They rarely do well in GRE, because they lack the level of cognitive aptitude that the first category students have in them presented. The third and fourth types of students are out of our analytic discussion altogether. The fifth type, however, may not do well in the academic career, but their level of concept on the subject matter of everything makes it easier for them to learn about GRE and also perform well. Sometimes they do better than that of the first type, as they grow rich in the street-knowledge and that helps them to be better in many prospects than that of the first type, even in tests like GRE.

Why analyzing the traits of students should be important to understand preparation pattern of GRE

If we thoroughly analyze the student traits and let it assimilate with the test trait of GRE, we will learn that GRE is nothing but the game of focus, determination and hard dedication. If some students know how to dedicate and focus, these students will automatically do great in tests like GRE. Now by mentioning focus, I did not mean scoring a high-enough CGPA. If someone scores the minimum CGPA of 3.00 out of 4.00 – and then can show a good GRE score (along with leadership skills and a great admission essay), that person is bound to do better with the University admission council than that of many other students. However, there are certain students who are very much well-apprehended in their own subject (appearing in dean-list and in line to become a faculty member), and yet they fail in quantitative part of GRE. Therefore, focus and dedication comes from a different place and it may have a very little to do with CGPA or academic results. However, having a great academic results definitely help in a long run.

Some ways for students to go through with the preparation

A student has ample times to prepare for their GRE. In most of the cases, their academic life makes their preparation stronger as they are in continuous process of studying. So, preparing for GRE should not be a big deal for them. There are some ways that a student can prepare for their GRE:

The first thing a student must do is to increase skills in Verbal and Quantitative part. This part should be easier for the students as the get ample times for studying. They can use ample materials from online and offline resources and make a schedule according to their study plan to get involved in there on a regular basis.
To increase the level of verbal aptitude, a student must increase their reading habit. It does not have to be some cut-and-dry boring news articles. It may be a literature of novel or anything what-so-ever. The main object is to read properly and learn from it, something substantial such as online news article and some prominent writer’s novel. Because most of the verbal vocabularies which appear in the test day are from these materials.
Now there is a question of quantitative skill growth. For that, “practice” has no alternative. That is being said assuming that the candidate who will practice the quantitative part regularly has a clear concept over the whole topic. Therefore, if the concept is not clear to begin with, the candidate should make them clear as soon as possible. Then there will be more and more practices everyday.
The timing is a fact to consider here. The timing of practicing GRE should be based on the original study and class or academic schedule. However, students who wants to sit for GRE today or tomorrow, must make it a habit to go through the materials on a regular basis.

Last but not the least, I would like to mention about the duration of preparation here. I have seen a lot of students taking preparation for two years and appearing for GRE before the final result is published. This is very wise decision to take because this way time constraint does not happen to be a matter of worry. However, premature preparation like this also have is demerits such as, some students become over-confident that he has been preparing for GRE for over 2 years, which is supposed to make him invincible. Therefore, the timing has to be perfect along with all other preparation criteria for students for a better score assurance.

And also, there are a lot of local centers who take mock tests. Selecting a good center and going for the mocks there would be a good idea in this regard, the more the merrier.

Those who would like a sample routine to follow, please contact me in this address (renewable.and.green@gmail.com) and I will help them make a routine for GRE preparation.

That’s it for today. In my next article, I will thoroughly describe the GRE preparation criteria of full-time/part-time job holders.

Till then, happy reading.