Let’s be honest first

This article is for people who have studied under the conventional boards of education of Pakistan and have only done so to get good grades. If you’re someone who only did the first two exercises of Chapter 6 (Conics) in HSSC-2 Mathematics or none at all, I’m talking to you. Also, remember those “Attempt any three of the five” kind of questions? Forget that. You have to do all of them. Plus, most of us didn’t develop the good habit of reading…so, great! That’s me too so…it’s okay.

Anyways, none of those drawbacks or shortcomings mean that you can’t score well in the GRE. I had all the issues that a normal FSc student would face in an exam like the GRE…plus some of my own and I still scored 321 (which is my 340) so if I can do it, anyone can do it and here’s how:

Understanding the testing pattern

You remember those FSc days when we used to sit down and think about how we were going to solve the MCQs first, followed by some short questions and then long? That was half battle won because okay, you knew how much margin you had in different topics to cover and how much you would get in the actual exam. Use the same tactic for the GRE :)

The GRE is divided into:

2 essays — Called Analytical Writing to beautify it (30 minutes each) 2 verbal sections (20 questions per section — 30 minutes each) 2 quantitative sections (20 questions per section — 35 minutes each) 1 experimental section — Not Graded (either verbal or quantitative — Same marking and division as others)

Note here that GRE is a section adaptive test. For instance, if you perform well in one section that was easy, you’re going to get a tougher next one based on your performance in the former. The test is graded differently too for that that’s not our concern. Our concern is to get most questions right, if not all.

Alright, I know that “not graded” part got you a little bit relaxed but wait for it…

You can’t tell which one is the experimental one. :)

I know. Sucks. You can tell that you got a quantitative experimental or a verbal one, but out of the three, you can’t tell which one it was. So don’t relax.

So that’s the general testing pattern. The next part is getting into the three types of sections individually and breaking them down. Let’s get into that and this is important because this will help you establish what you’d be preparing when you start preparing. I will start with quantitative first because it’s better to ease into this and this is something every student with good background in mathematics can score for sure. That rhyme was not intended.

1. Quantitative Section:

FSc students, assemble. This is where your planning from those college days comes into play but with some trade-offs. First, know that you can get close to perfect in this section or a perfect score. Honest. It just depends on how much you are willing to put in the effort.

I’ll start with the topics that you’re presented with:

I ain’t writing them down for you and you’ll get the resources. Will link. Sc: Manhattan 5lb Book

Okay, so these are the topics for quantitative. Now to prepare them, you need to spend some quality time getting to know what the questions ask of you. On average, you have one minute and twenty seconds to solve a question. If you can’t do that, it’s highly probably you’re missing something fundamentally, which is fine and you can work on that as well. The three resources I think are critical for preparing quantitative portion are the following:

a. Manhattan’s 5lb Book of GRE Problems

b. Manhattan’s GRE Set of 8 Strategy guides

c. ETS Official guides

Okay, so here’s where another one of our FSc tactics come into play. Practicing the hell out of something but again, this is the GRE so you have to pay attention. I am going to break it down

Read the question. If you understand it, attempt it. If you can’t solve it, mark it. See where you went wrong. Note down the question and solution somewhere neat and mark where you made a mistake.

You have to do this with each topic from each of the three resources, in that order, mentioned. This will help you in two ways. One, you’ll start noticing how many different ways there are of presenting a question and which traps to look out for when attempting a question. Two, you’ll start maintaining a notebook of the questions you made a mistake in and you can review it before the test day. (Don’t think you can review everything before the test day. You can’t). Also, don’t think that the method mentioned in the book or the solution is the one that best suits your style. It maybe that the method you’re doing to solve question works better for you with respect to time than the solution mentioned in the book. So, experiment and do what fits best for you.

Now there are a few topics which are problematic for a lot of FSc students (were for me at least). They aren’t a lot. Just Averages, Weighted Averages, Median, Mode, Standard Deviations and Normal Distributions, Probability and Combinatorics, and Overlapping Sets. So you know what that means. Either skim through them and hope you don’t encounter them in their most unforgiving shape, or you spend more time on them and get better at solving at least intermediate level of questions. (Second resource can help you a lot with differentiating the difficulty). But know that you have to almost be perfect in the other topics to score in this section. Remember.

Practice and make notes. Practice and make notes. Please.

There are a couple of other books that can help you. If you get the time, do them. Again, I’ll give all the resources, just drop an email.

That covers the part which we are good at. Now comes the part where we suck the most and is probably the most challenging…Verbal…Alright…here we go.

2. Verbal Section:

For the sake of this article, I will keep my tone SFW because I genuinely hate this section. But hey, we have to go through with it so put on your happy face and do this. And remember, we can do this. :)

Seriously. Put on a happy face.

So, here’s the thing. Conventional FSc students suck at this part. I did too. I still do to some extent. But, there are a few ways to go about this using our previous “tactics”. Let’s first understand the different questions that come in the verbal section.

a. Text Completion (MCQs type — Mix of 1-blank, 2-blank, 3-blank)

b. Reading Comprehension/Critical Analysis Passage

c. Sentence Equivalence (MCQs type — Select two options)

Okay, so…sounds easy enough, right? That’s exactly it. It just sounds easy. Let’s take this step by step.

First part and third part is the text completion and sentence equivalence. Text completions are sentences with blanks in between them. They are going to be 1-blank, 2-blank, 3 blank and you’re going to get a mix of all of them. Sentence equivalence involves selecting two options that complete the meaning of the sentence presented. There are different choices underneath them so you will have some margin of relying on guessing or something but it doesn’t work every time…it didn’t work for me, at least. So what other option do we have?

Well now you might have heard of the very much discussed names of Magoosh and Barron and Flashcards. We’re going to go and do exactly those. Here’s how:

You’re going to need these few resources and a lot of time if you want to absolutely nail this part and the later ones:

a. Magoosh Flashcards App

b. Barron’s 800 Essential Word list

Now here comes the tough pill to swallow, if you want a fighting chance in these sections based on your vocabulary, you will have to memorize a lot of the words. Where this is somewhat equivalent to cramming, well it is cramming, we’ll look into one of the best techniques of cramming. So here’s some Chatur Ramlingam for you from 3 Idiots.

I got this tip from Yash Mitra, he runs a YouTube channel which I will link below, and his videos have been really helpful. What he suggests is that we maintain a dictionary. A personal dictionary.

Take a notebook. Write the word. Write the meaning. Write the Mnemonic. Write a sentence with the word. Pray.

What good will this do? Chances are that, for a word, you’ll either remember the meaning, the mnemonic, or the sentence, or a combination of them and you’ll work your way to the meaning through that. It’s a little cumbersome but hey, happy face and happy thoughts. This tactic is only related to vocabulary. The other part to focus is actually the sentence structure and…mathematically solving it. I know it sounds weird but just here me out.

“G RE Verbal is a test of how well you can use and work with English, not just knowing it.” — Baba Ranchordas

There’s a YouTube channel by the name “gregmat”. He’s also on reddit and occasionally helps people out who post there. He has made tremendous amount of videos where he discusses multiple methods to take on these text completion questions. I won’t get into it them myself right now because you can benefit more from the videos. Will link the channel.

On to the next one, the RC and Critical Analysis passages. If you think it’s anything closely related to IELTS or something, it’s not. It’s a different ball game. Now these are a pain for two reasons. One, you know the answer is right in front of you and you have to dig it out. Two, passages are tough and demand some time which you obviously are limited on. So what works? Let’s get into the tactic and then how you can get better at it.

RC passages are essentially discussing a very simple point, a simple idea, and establish something very simple but are presented in a way that will make you want to say, “what’s the whole point of this?”. Lengthy or short, all passages can be broken down into their components and you can solve the questions from there on.

Tactic

You see the passage and determine the length of it. If it’s a short passage (One paragraph with a couple of sentences besides), you immediately go to your rough paper and go like this:

You simplify each sentence and write it down on your beautifully planned template. Then you move onto the question and select your answer accordingly. Remember to read the question statement carefully. EACH WORD IN THAT QUESTION HAS A PURPOSE AND YOUR ANSWER CAN VARY ACCORDINGLY.

What to do about multiple paragraphs? Simple. You do the the same with the first paragraph, skim through the others and write their main idea on the side. If you get asked from the other paragraphs, which you probably would, you would know which paragraph they are referring to and you’d only go to that without wasting any time.

How to get better?

Wait for it…Practice. The best resources for these are the exact same books I mentioned for the quantitative sections. Simple as that. There isn’t a magic remedy for this. Just sheer and honest effort from your side.

Take the techniques you learn and apply them to as many passages as you can to get better at them.

3. The Two Essays

These are of two types:

Argument Essay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFa8oeXXuoA

Issue Essay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhzlaHXHaK4

Enjoy :)