1520 - My GRE exam retake

1520 - My GRE exam retake

I had given my GRE exam the first time in Jun 2010 and scored 1310(740 Q, 570 V, 4.5 AW).I retook my exam in Dec 2010 and scored 1520 (800 Q, 720 V and 4.5 AW).

I got my score card today and it shows 800 Quant is 94 percentile and 720 Verbal is 98 percentile. According to the GRE vs GMAT tool bb has posted, my score is around 760 GMAT.


I expected more than 5.0 in Analytical writing,but overall I am happy with the results and am glad that I decided to retake.

My preparation
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Verbal -

1. Vocabulory - Norman Lewis Wordpower made easy and about 4000 words from Barrons.

2. Analogies, Antonyms and Sentence correction - Barrons, Nova, Manhattan GRE and ETS GRE Big book.

3. Reading comprehension - I got a copy of Manhattan GRE Reading Comprehension book and found it useful. This was my weak area and I refered to the strategies for RC in Gmat club and found Rhyme's strategy helpful.

Manhattan GRE recommends reading aldaily.com to get familiar with GRE-like materials. In addition, I read some fiction books - Memoirs of a Geisha, Lolita etc.

I believe the key to improving RC is getting more practice. I started doing RCs from various sources - Manhattan GRE, 1000 RC, Big book, Barrons and GMAT materials like OG, Veritas prep etc.


Quantitative -

The GRE exam focuses on basics of Maths rather than tougher concepts.

One question I got was based on understanding of decimal positions. I remember , when I started studying GRE, I was initially confused about "hundreds" position and "hundreths" position.So, when I got this question, I was smiling.

1. Revised Mathreview available for free download at ETS website.

2. The first time, I mostly followed Barrons and GRE Math Bible. But this time, since I was preparing GMAT in paralell, I had already completed the Manhattan guides for Word problems, Number properties and didnt feel the need to use the Math Bible for basics. Rest of the topics - Algebra , Geometry etc I used the Manhattan GRE material.I randomly did practice questions from Powerprep, Nova Math Bible, Barrons, GMAT Club , Manhattan GRE etc.

Analytical Writing -

I did not follow any material except Chineseburned's template.

Practice Tests -

1. Powerprep (Very close to the real exam)
2. Manhattan GRE exams

There were other sources for mock tests like Barrons CD, Kaplan etc. But since I had done those in the first attempt, I remembered the questions and hence didnt find it useful doing those the second time.

I just got my GRE score card today and am analyzing my results at grediagnostics. I see that out of 28 questions, I got 3 wrong and 25 correct. Clearly, it is not required to answer all questions correct to get 800.

Thanks to GMAT Club. I was able to use many GMAT materials and strategies here. Special thanks to the GMAT Math book. I visited the GMAT Math book several times to refer to Math basics when I found the materials and books .