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Last Updated on November 10, 2023
If you’ve been studying for the GRE for some time and still cannot get over the “hump” with your GRE score, or if you have taken many GREs but just can’t seem to hit your target score, then you have come to the right place! I understand that a stagnant GRE score is frustrating, but the good news is that, regardless of what you’ve been doing in the past, there still is hope! This article will discuss various reasons why your GRE score is not improving as well as how to improve your GRE score.
- Task #1: Identify Any Knowledge or Skill Gaps
- Task #2: Eliminate Careless Mistakes
- Task #3: Address Timing Issues
- Task #4: Follow a Topical and Systematic Study Plan
- Task #5: Avoid Inefficient Strategies
- Task #6: Manage Your Test Anxiety
- How Quickly Can I Improve my GRE Score?
- By How Much Can You Realistically Improve Your GRE Score?
- In Conclusion
- What’s Next?
Let’s talk about the 6 main tasks you can complete to help improve your GRE score.
Task #1: Identify Any Knowledge or Skill Gaps
There are hundreds of concepts you need to master to improve your GRE score. Because you don’t know which concepts will be tested on exam day, you have to be knowledgeable about them all. Additionally, if you’ve been studying for the GRE for any length of time, you likely understand that it takes understanding multiple concepts and using multiple skills in tandem to answer any one GRE question.
So, identifying any knowledge or skill gaps you have is a must for improving your score. The more gaps you close, the more concepts and skills you’ll be able to employ when faced with any category of GRE question.
Identifying any knowledge or skill gaps you have is a must for improving your score.
With that in mind, let’s discuss how to identify your knowledge and skill gaps.
Pinpoint Specific Weaknesses
Identifying gaps in knowledge or skills can be somewhat tricky, especially if you’re missing questions that involve applying multiple concepts in one problem. You have to break down the question into its component steps to identify your weak area. For example, a rate-time-distance question may require you to do all of the following:
- Interpret the given information
- Recall and apply one or more formulas
- Create an equation
- Solve a system of equations involving fractions
So, let’s say you encounter an average rate question. What would happen if you knew the formula but made a mistake in dividing fractions as you calculated the average rate (step 4)? You would not correctly answer the question! Perhaps this is a sign that you have issues working with fractions, which is a common problem among GRE students who haven’t done much math since high school. Difficulties with fractions can negatively impact your ability to answer many GRE quant questions, and working with fractions is just one skill.
Now, perhaps you’ve noticed that you frequently miss rate-time-distance questions or can solve only the easiest of such questions when doing mixed problem sets or taking practice tests. However, what you haven’t realized is that you don’t simply “have trouble with rate-time-distance questions.” The real issue is that you’re not well-versed in handling calculations involving fractions.
If you were to shore up that skill, rate-time-distance questions would become one of your strongest areas in Quant. The trick is to pinpoint this specific weakness, so you can address the root cause of your missing certain question types.
Pinpointing weaknesses is essential in the Verbal arena as well. For example, you might encounter a particular Sentence Equivalence question and recall that you must find two answer choices that are similar in meaning (a synonym pair). You identify two synonym pairs among the answer choices, and you find that when either pair is used, the two sentences created convey the same meaning.
You answer the question with what you feel is the best answer, and then you later discover that your answer was incorrect. You double-check the meanings of all the words and verify that your vocabulary knowledge was spot-on. So, what happened?
Well, when you carefully reread the question in its entirety, you realize that you overlooked the contrast word “despite,” which clarifies that the two synonym words you chose made no sense and the other synonym pair was correct. The takeaway here is that, even though you missed a vocabulary question, it was not the word meanings but a context clue that tripped you up. After pinpointing this weakness, you can spend additional time reviewing the real reason for your incorrect answer: contrast/agreement words.
TTP PRO TIP:
Pinpoint your specific weaknesses, so that you can identify the root causes of your incorrect answers.
Keep an Error Log
Keeping a detailed error log is the easiest way to pinpoint your knowledge and skill gaps and ensure you’re systematically addressing them. Keeping a detailed error log means tracking which types of questions you get wrong and why you got them wrong. For example, when analyzing a Quant question you answered incorrectly, you might ask yourself the following:
- Did I fully understand the content upon which the question is based?
- Was there a particular formula I needed but was unaware of?
- Did I forget how to perform a certain mathematical technique (ex., solving a quadratic equation)?
- Did I misinterpret the question or fail to recognize key clues in the question?
- Did I fall for a trap answer, and if so, why?
Each time you identify a gap in your math knowledge or skills, you get another step closer to your GRE score goal. So, when analyzing the results of practice tests, be sure that you carefully review each question you answered incorrectly and identify exactly what went wrong. Doing so will allow you to pick up on troubling patterns and weak points that you might otherwise misidentify or not recognize at all.
Each time you identify a gap in your math knowledge or skills, you get another step closer to your GRE target score.
Hopefully, you’ve been tracking your errors throughout your GRE prep, but if not, it’s never too late to start. Luckily, if you’re using the TTP GRE Prep Course, all of that information is tracked for you.
Analyze Your Practice Test Results
Particularly when reviewing your practice test results, you must use every question you see to analyze your strengths and weaknesses thoroughly. Each practice test has only 40 quant and 40 verbal questions. So, don’t take any question for granted.
It’s important to be honest with yourself when reviewing wrong answers. For example, did you answer a question on cylinders correctly because of a lucky guess? If so, take the time to revisit cylinders and the topics in questions you didn’t answer correctly. Remember, while some guesses may go your way on test day, you can’t count on being able to “fool” the GRE.
If you skimp on the necessary work of finding and fixing any gaps in your knowledge or skills between practice tests, you shouldn’t expect your score to increase from one test to the next. Also, don’t be surprised if you need 4 or 5 days to fully review a practice test and study the material corresponding to your weak areas.
For more on using practice tests to maximize your GRE score, check out these strategies for taking GRE practice tests.
TTP PRO TIP:
When reviewing your practice test results, use every question you see to analyze your strengths and weaknesses thoroughly.
Task #2: Eliminate Careless Mistakes
Whenever a student asks me, “How can I improve my GRE score?,” I immediately ask the student about his propensity for careless mistakes. Careless mistakes come in all shapes and sizes. You might fail to register a crucial word in the given information (ex., “x is a positive integer”), or make a calculation error (ex., you simplify 16/20 as 3/4), or forget that the question asked you to find Taylor’s age 3 years ago instead of Taylor’s current age. Enough of these mindless errors can undoubtedly have the power to keep your GRE score at a standstill. So, becoming more accurate when solving GRE questions will go a long way in raising your score.
Careless Mistakes Are Unforgivable
Careless mistakes are different from other errors that lead to incorrect answers because careless mistakes don’t typically reflect gaps in your knowledge of GRE content (although they may). More often, silly mistakes result from bad habits such as reading questions too quickly, rushing through calculations, relying too much on mental math, or taking sloppy and disorganized notes.
Careless mistakes can be debilitating and frustrating because they can cause you to get questions wrong that you should get right. So, if you tend to make many careless errors, fixing them will certainly lead to an improved GRE score. Fortunately, careless mistakes are avoidable and can be eliminated with focus, proper strategy, and practice.
Careless mistakes can be debilitating and frustrating because they can cause you to get questions wrong that you should get right.
Careless Mistakes Are 100% Avoidable
Overall, one of the most powerful things you can do to reduce the likelihood of making a careless mistake is to become aware of the types of careless mistakes you tend to make. Once you are aware of your patterns, you can alert yourself before you make a certain type of mistake, even catching yourself in the act and averting a mistake before it has a chance to affect your score. Your error log will help you understand the types of errors inhibiting your ability to make significant gains in your score. So, be sure to note when you get a question wrong because of a careless mistake and what the mistake was.
If, for example, you notice a pattern of answering questions that aren’t being asked, then start double-checking what the question is asking before you choose your answer. For example, if you are asked to determine Martha’s age, be sure that you don’t answer the question for Theresa’s age. Believe it or not, these types of mistakes are quite common, and fixing them will do wonders for your GRE score.
Or, if you often mix up numbers or lose track of calculations that involve math skills you know you’re solid in, reevaluate your note-taking techniques and brush up on your pencil-and-paper calculation skills.
In addition to becoming aware of which careless errors you commit, you must take a mindful and methodical approach to your work when answering GRE questions. This means doing something that many test-takers dread doing: slow down. Slowing down and working carefully on the problem in front of you can greatly reduce careless errors that keep your GRE score in a holding pattern. Focus intently on each problem, working through each step as efficiently as possible without rushing.
Think of it this way: It’s better to slow down and prevent four silly mistakes, even if doing so forces you to guess on the last question because you ran out of time, than to rush through those four questions and get all of them wrong because you made mindless, preventable mistakes.
TTP PRO TIP:
Working slowly and carefully reduces careless errors that keep your GRE score in a holding pattern.
Task #3: Address Timing Issues
A major component of improving your GRE score is timing. Poor timing is a common issue among GRE students and certainly can be why a student may struggle to improve his GRE score. For example, some students “overspend” on one or more questions, leaving very little time for the remaining ones. We often overspend on a question because we believe that we should get it correct and thus do not want to let it go.
In other cases, students rush headlong through several questions, leaving too much time at the end of a section. Sure, you then have the opportunity to go back and check answers, but in an ideal world, you’d spend enough time on each question that you don’t have to go back. An excellent way to remedy some of these timing issues is to develop an internal clock.
TTP PRO TIP:
An excellent way to remedy timing issues on the GRE is to develop an internal clock.
Develop Your Internal Clock
Your internal clock, once you’ve developed it, should give you a reasonably accurate sense of how long you’ve been working on a question and how much time you have left to find an answer.
On average, you have 1 minute and 45 seconds to answer a GRE Quant question. Thus, it will be incredibly helpful to have an intuitive understanding of what 1 minute and 45 seconds feels like. One way to develop this intuition is to practice timed GRE questions in the latter portion of your GRE prep.
Start a timer when you start work on a question. When you think that 1 minute and 45 seconds are up, look at the timer to see how close you were to the actual time. Your goal is to get a comfortable intuition for what that time feels like. The more you practice this simple exercise of “when 1 minute and 45 seconds are up,” the easier it will be for you to have a feel for this key benchmark.
TTP PRO TIP:
Practice getting a feel for when 1 minute and 45 seconds, your average allotted time per GRE Quant question, are up.
Of course, the fact that you hit the 1-minute and 45-second mark on a particular GRE quant question doesn’t mean that you should guess and immediately move on. If you feel that you are close to getting an answer, perhaps spending another 30 to 45 seconds on the question would be worthwhile.
Conversely, you do not have to spend 1 minute and 45 seconds on every GRE quant question. For example, if you are 30 seconds into a nasty Geometry question and are lost on which way to go, then take a guess and move on! I’d rather you save that time for another question that is in your wheelhouse.
The bottom line is that improving your timing strategies will help you improve your GRE score. To learn more timing strategies, check out our blog about time management for GRE quant.
Task #4: Follow a Topical and Systematic Study Plan
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve spoken with GRE students who have been unable to improve their scores, and unsurprisingly, they were not following any structured study plan. Many of these students were using a few GRE study books and were practicing hundreds of random questions in the hopes that they could master GRE Quant and Verbal just by reviewing solutions to problems. If that situation reminds you of something you’re doing, I have news for you: your study method likely won’t allow you to improve your GRE score.
Remember, there are hundreds of topics that you must learn to succeed on the GRE. So, unless you follow a structured and organized study plan, you will struggle to learn so much information. By following a linear, topic-by-topic approach to GRE prep, you’ll be using the best method to ensure that you properly understand each GRE topic. You won’t waste time practicing questions before you’ve mastered your core knowledge.
For example, do you think it would be useful to jump around from Sentence Equivalence questions to one-blank Text Completion questions before you’ve mastered either of those topics? The short answer is NO. Similarly, would it be helpful to jump from Number Properties questions to Geometry questions to Probability questions before mastering those topics? Again, the answer is NO! Jumping around from topic to topic will not allow you to gain footing in any one Quant or Verbal topic. You will feel like you’re treading water rather than moving forward smoothly and building your knowledge. If you study that way and are not improving your GRE score, it should be no surprise why.
So, the structure of your GRE study plan should be to learn one topic at a time, and then practice questions just on that one topic before moving to the next one. Using this method, start with the fundamentals and work your way up to more advanced concepts. Following this approach will allow you to make major gains in your GRE score.
TTP PRO TIP:
Don’t try to learn advanced topics before you’ve mastered the basics.
Task #5: Avoid Inefficient Strategies
Quant
Even if you know all the concepts, rules, and formulas necessary for performing well in GRE Quant, it’s still possible to hit a score ceiling that you can’t seem to break. Such a situation might occur if you favor certain approaches that aren’t as practical as others when answering GRE questions.
For example, some students insist on testing values when solving most Quantitative Comparison questions, even when simplification or substitution will more efficiently lead to the right answer. While testing values has its merits in certain circumstances, it is not a one-size-fits-all strategy that can be applied in all circumstances.
Meanwhile, many students seek to “game” GRE Quant by using strategies such as backsolving and testing answers when using algebra would make more sense. Sure, backsolving may work here and there, but you’re better off using a strategy that will work for a wide range of questions, not just for a select few. After all, if the strategies you employ work less than 50 percent of the time, do you think you’ll be able to improve your GRE score?
Breaking out of your comfort zone can be challenging if you’ve become accustomed to using inefficient techniques. Still, if improving your score is important, you must take the time to “retrain your brain” so that more efficient ways of solving GRE problems become second nature to you. It’s important to remember that most GRE Quant questions can be solved using various approaches, but there is usually one approach that is much faster than the others. So, when answering practice questions, seek to identify at least two different ways to solve each question. You can even test each approach to see which one is most efficient.
TTP PRO TIP:
Take the time to “retrain your brain” so that more efficient ways of solving GRE problems become second nature to you.
Verbal
Similarly, in GRE Verbal, there are more and less efficient ways of answering questions. To finish the Verbal section on time and maximize your Verbal score, you need to learn to use approaches that are both efficient and effective.
For instance, in answering Text Completion questions, you’ll be much more efficient if you use an organized step-by-step strategy of reading the entire sentence, identifying key markers and context clues, and then systematically going through the answer choices than you will be if you just plug choices into the blanks to see what works.
In Reading Comprehension also, there are efficient, effective strategies that can be used for answering each type of question. Of course, if you take the time to learn to use such strategies, you’ll achieve much greater speed and accuracy than you’d achieve by either using haphazard approaches to answer the questions or using gimmicky methods that don’t work reliably.
In general, it may be that a key aspect of improving your GRE Verbal score is to improve the efficiency with which you answer questions. For each type of Verbal question, you can ask yourself whether you actually have a clear strategy for answering questions of that type, whether your approach to answering them is efficient, and what you could do to answer them more efficiently.
In other words, when you see a GRE Verbal question, you should know how to proceed in order to answer it. So, if you discover that, for a type of Verbal question, you don’t have at the ready an approach that’s both efficient and reliably effective, then you’ve found an opportunity to improve your GRE Verbal score.
TTP PRO TIP:
To maximize your GRE Verbal score, learn an efficient, effective approach for answering each type of GRE Verbal question.
Task #6: Manage Your Test Anxiety
When GRE students do the tasks I’ve already discussed in this article but still can’t obtain their target GRE scores, I generally point to one thing: anxiety.
Increased heart rate, shallow breathing, racing thoughts — many people suffer from test anxiety. This anxiety can become especially pronounced during a high-stakes test such as the GRE. After all, a lot is riding on your GRE performance!
Of course, a little bit of test anxiety is natural and expected for even the most well-prepared GRE-taker. However, too much anxiety related to the GRE can be a distraction, causing you to lose focus and limiting your ability to achieve a score that reflects your actual GRE skills. Consequently, if you can get a handle on your test anxiety, you’ll be one step closer to breaking through your GRE score ceiling.
There are numerous proven techniques for managing test anxiety, from visualization and breathing exercises to transforming anxiety into excitement. Such techniques are worth exploring if you feel that test anxiety has been holding back your GRE score improvement.
The most overlooked technique for combating test anxiety is knowing the material backward and forward. The better you know the material, the more relaxed you’ll be when you’re tested on it. Consider a 40-question math test on basic multiplication and division, for example. Would you be particularly nervous about taking that test? Chances are, you’re quite comfortable with multiplication and division because you’ve been practicing those operations for many years. In other words, you’d be so well-prepared for a test on multiplication and division that you’d have no reason to be nervous about performing well on it.
So, even if you think you are well-prepared to tackle GRE questions on test day, prepare some more! Be so prepared that the material is no longer anxiety-provoking. Here is a great strategy for getting comfortable with GRE content: Don’t practice until you can get questions right; practice so much that you can’t get questions wrong.
The bottom line is that if you can get rid of most of your test anxiety, your GRE score should improve.
The most overlooked technique for combating test anxiety is knowing the material backward and forward.
Up to this point, we’ve discussed a number of tasks necessary for improving your GRE score. But I’m sure you are wondering, “How quickly can I improve my GRE score?” Let’s discuss that now.
How Quickly Can I Improve my GRE Score?
Certainly, this question can be answered in several ways, depending on your current GRE status. For example, when you look at the “tasks” listed above, how many of those are currently affecting your GRE score? If you need to improve in all 6 areas, it may take a significant amount of time to improve your GRE score. However, if you need to tackle just one task, such as managing anxiety, then I would say that you can improve your GRE score in pretty short order.
Another consideration is how far you are from your GRE target score. For example, if you are currently scoring 300 and have a target score of 330, then you are looking for a 30-point score improvement.
That type of score increase will not happen overnight. The fact is, if you are 30 points from your target score, you likely have some significant knowledge gaps and likely are not following an appropriate study plan. So, getting yourself on the right track will take considerable time and effort. The good news is, it can be done!
By How Much Can You Realistically Improve Your GRE Score?
The million-dollar question for GRE students is always this: How much can I improve my GRE score? My answer is always the same: as long as you follow the right study plan and a realistic timeline, there is essentially no limit to how many points you can add to your GRE score. Of course, you have to be realistic, right?
So, if you need a 40-point increase in your GRE score, be sure to give yourself as many as 6 to 8 months to study (or longer). Also, keep in mind that your ability to make such a huge score leap is based on following the best study practices (as mentioned above) and remaining motivated throughout the months of preparation. The fact is, as long as you work hard and NEVER give up, your GRE target score is always in reach.
TTP PRO TIP:
As long as you follow the right study plan and a realistic timeline, there is essentially no limit to how many points you can add to your GRE score.
In Conclusion
This article has covered 6 major tasks that you should complete if you are wondering how to improve your GRE score.
- Identify any knowledge or skill gaps.
- Keep an error log.
- Eliminate careless mistakes.
- Address timing issues.
- Follow a systematic and topical study plan.
- Manage your test anxiety.
If you can complete the tasks above, there is no reason why you cannot get the GRE score you deserve.
What’s Next?
Looking for specific advice on how to improve your quant score? Then check our article about how to increase your GRE quant score.
Still, wondering why you are struggling to improve your GRE score? Then it may help to learn about how hard is the GRE?
Want more tips on improving your GRE score? Learn how to incorporate flashcards into your GRE studying.
