8 Week Study Plan, Eighth Week

Plan for the Week

During week 8, you will finish your preparation for the GRE. You'll review the last practice test that you took, and, more importantly, you'll do more practice questions and then REVIEW all of the practice questions that you have seen. You'll need to spend at least 6 days in preparing for the GRE, spending upwards of 2 hours each day, for a total of 12 hours. Here is a sample week plan:

• Day 1: Review the last practice test that you took at the end of week #5. Really try to understand why you may have gotten some of the questions wrong.
• Days 2-4: Continue to do practice questions from ALL of the available sections. Spend upwards of 90 minutes each day doing problems, and be sure to analyze and study the explanations as well as provided hints for each practice questions. You'll notice that the provided hints are meant to show you how you might want to approach a problem. There is usually more than one way to arrive at a right answer, so your method might be good, too, but be sure that you are comfortable with quickly understanding each question and knowing if you have to guess or if you can eliminate any of the choices. Most importantly, briefly review all of the practice questions that you have done up to this point -- you should be pleasantly surprised that some of the questions that you did early and which you thought were difficult are straight-forward by this time. If this is the case, then you have most likely followed the format of this plan and you should be well prepared for the GRE.
• Day 5: Almost done! This really is the last day when you should be going over vocabulary words and reviewing any of the tutorials that you may have struggled with.
• Day 6: Ideally, you should try and drive or otherwise visit the test center just to make sure you know how long it takes to get there. It would be unfortunate if you were to find out on test day that the test center is 2 hours away as opposed to what you thought was 1 hour, in which case you'd add unnecessary stress on the test day. Also, briefly review any of the tutorials sections that you have had most trouble with, and review those questions that you've seen in those sections.

Week Study Plan for Math Component of GRE

There really are no new topics that you'll learn this week; instead your week will be spent doing practice questions. By now you should have realized that the math part of the GRE is not about testing you and whether you have memorized formulas. Although simple formulas are required, the main part of the math component of the GRE tests your ability to dissect and analyze a problem. There is no way for you to guess what questions you'll see on test day, but by now you should be confident enough to know that you can tackle a math problem with ease.

Week Study Plan for Verbal Component of GRE

As with the math study plan for the GRE, the verbal study plan for the last week does not require you to learn any new topics or ideas; instead you'll be doing plenty of practice questions.

Week Study Plan for Essay Component of GRE

Like we've been saying all along, you can't learn how to write well in just six weeks, but you CAN prepare for the type of essay that will be expected of you. Remember to write short, clear sentences. The more complicated your writing, the more difficult it is to decipher, and the bigger the chance that one of your essay readers will be confused and will be forced to give you a low score. Remember; simple is better.