Wrapping up | Achievable GRE

Congratulations, you’ve made it through all of the Achievable GRE material!

In this last section, we won’t discuss any testable content. Instead, we’ll review how to register for the actual exam, what to expect on the exam, and some best practices as you approach your test date.

Registering for the GRE

To register for the GRE, you will need to create an account on the ETS website. Once you have made your account, you will have the option to register for either an in-person or online exam. You are also free to look at available testing dates for both in-person and at-home test takers here. The test can be taken at any time of year, but be careful not to take it too close to your application deadlines just in case you choose to take the test again. It’s also important to recognize that official scores are not available until 8 to 10 days after your test. You will have the option to send your scores to four schools on the day of your exam free of charge. After those four schools, you will need to pay $35 to send your scores to every other school. You can read more about this policy here. According to the most recent information, the test will cost you $220, but there are exceptions for test takers in India and China or those eligible for the Fee Reduction Program.

When am I ready to take the GRE?

There’s no perfect answer to this question, but your scores on Achievable practice exams are your best gauge for success. If you’ve been using the system as intended, you’ve probably taken hundreds or even thousands of practice questions in your reviews. This is real knowledge you’ve built that’s necessary to pass the exam.

However, you need to prove your ability to “put the big picture together” by taking and reviewing numerous practice exams. Our practice exams are created to simulate the actual test by covering various topics across all testable material. When you take a practice exam, put your notes aside. Using resources during the exam (like the Achievable reading material or Google) will artificially inflate your score.

After every exam, be sure to do a thorough review of each question and answer. Confirm you understand why you’re getting questions right or wrong. Also, think beyond the question. One of the biggest and most common pitfalls to avoid is studying questions instead of content. While our questions are written to mimic the actual exam questions, no one knows what questions they’ll see on the exam. The ETS closely guards their question bank and their test writers create uniquely worded questions. If you’re memorizing answers to our questions without understanding “the why,” you’re setting yourself up for failure.

The best way to do this is by asking yourself this:

If I was given another question, with a completely different scenario and/or wording, am I confident I would know the answer?

If the answer is yes, keep moving forward. If the answer is no, jump back into the reading materials and review the topic.

Our practice exams have the exact time constraints, question types, and overall structure as the real GRE exam. We use our hundreds of quant templates and hundreds of verbal questions to give you a completely randomized exam that feels like the actual GRE. Here are a few tips to help you get an accurate diagnostic test and to help put your scores into the right perspective.

Simulate the real test day experience

When you’re taking practice exam sections, it’s best to take them seriously and pretend that it is actually your real exam day:

Make sure to minimize distractions. Silence your phone and let the people around you know you’ll be checked out for some time.
Do not use an advanced calculator, as the ETS one is extremely basic. This online version matches the ETS calculator closely.
Stay within the time constraints so you feel the pressure and fatigue you will feel on test day. We won’t cut you off if you’re still working, but it’s good to prepare yourself for the time pressure.

How to save time and maximize your score

The Achievable system is designed to have you drill the core techniques and be able to apply them quickly, so you can focus your time on the questions that require more critical thinking. Here are a few tips to maximize your time:

When you are 95% sure of an answer, choose it, flag it for review later if you have doubts, and then move on. Although it’s tempting to take extra time to solidify that last 5% of confidence, you want to ensure you’re progressing steadily through all questions.
Always reread the question before you choose your answer. This helps to mitigate avoidable mistakes where you might choose an incorrect answer simply because you skimmed the prompt rather than reading it closely.
On reading comprehension questions, write down A-E on a scratch paper and star, cross out, or put a question mark next to each letter as you work through the choices. This can help organize your thoughts, particularly when working through particularly challenging questions.

What to do if you haven’t seen a question before

We’re confident that our course teaches all the core techniques and formulas you’ll see on exam day. That said, there are an infinite amount of ways to present a question, and it’s impossible to prepare for every single variation. You should expect to see some “unknown” questions that will become approachable as you break them down into their core components.

ETS is constantly creating new exam questions. However, they all test the same set of principles that you’ve already learned. You already have the tools to answer every question, and it’s a matter of figuring out how to apply them.
A single question might test a multitude of principles at once. Getting a top percentile score on the GRE requires creativity and the ability to “zoom out” and see the whole picture. If a question feels too complicated to comprehend, break it down into smaller pieces, or just plug in numbers. Start with the value they are looking for and ask yourself what is needed in order to solve for that value. If the question is more abstract and doesn’t give concrete values, ask yourself what is needed to determine a possible value and go from there.
If you get stumped and have no clue how to attack a question, that’s alright. Just take your best guess, flag the question for review later, and move on so you can approach other questions with a clear mind. The questions will vary in difficulty, so it’s not productive to waste precious time on a tricky one when there are other easier ones to answer.

What is the best way to guess?

Even if you can’t determine the correct answer with certainty, making educated guesses can significantly increase your score.

For quantity comparison questions, we recommend selecting the answer choice D if you feel you have no idea how to proceed. This is not because it is the most likely answer choice to occur, but because if the question feels too complicated to solve, then it might simply be that there isn’t enough information to determine the relationship. It might be one of those pesky “non-question” questions that cannot truly be solved in any meaningful way, and those questions very often have D as their answer.
Be wary of extremes in reading comprehension, as they are frequently used as trap choices to distract you.
Always guess synonym pairs on sentence equivalence questions. If you know that two words are not close in meaning, it’s unlikely they’re both correct, so you should never choose them, even if you are guessing.

Use practice tests as a learning opportunity

You should be carefully reviewing every practice test to get the most value from your effort.

Always thoroughly review the questions you got incorrect, solving them a second time while you’re reviewing to ensure you thoroughly understand them.
If you notice that you took more time on specific question types, take a moment to ask yourself why those questions took more time. Was it because you couldn’t remember a formula? Or did you have difficulty breaking down a complex question into its component parts? Understanding where you’re spending too much time will allow you to study/practice those areas and improve.

Do not overtest

Diagnostic tests (i.e., practice exam sections) have two purposes: 1) to get you used to the pace of the exam, and 2) to give you an estimate of your score. If you have already taken a couple of practice tests before, you should be aware of the speed required to finish each section on time. Beyond that, you should take practice tests to determine your progress in reaching your target score. It’s unreasonable to repeatedly take back-to-back practice tests without spending time reviewing them. It will burn you out, and you won’t see long-term score increases as there isn’t adequate time between your exams to consolidate your learnings to make real progress. Practice tests are certainly important, but most of your time studying should be for learning and not timed testing.

Put the diagnostic score into perspective

Remember, your test scores are diagnostic scores, and they do not indicate the exact score you’ll receive on test day. Even the results from the official ETS practice tests are not exact predictors of how well you’ll do on test day. We have a wide question bank, but the more you study, the more you’ll start to recognize questions. You might be tempted to skip calculations and jump straight to the answer based on rote memorization, skewing your score. Remember that the goal of practice exams is to simulate the real exam experience and identify your weak areas for additional study, not to get the highest score possible!

On your actual exam, all questions will look fresh, and they will not be in the exact templates we have created. Our questions imitate the most recent GRE questions available. However, ETS is always writing new problems, and there are an endless amount of ways to test the concepts. Just remember that regardless of the way the questions are asked, they will certainly test the same principles that you have studied.

We highly encourage everyone to take the free PowerPrep practice tests from ETS for additional perspective. When you sign up for the exam, they will send you instructions on how to access these.

Final thoughts

Exams can be anxiety-inducing, but you CAN do it! Set yourself up for success by using the Achievable system as intended and following the best practices discussed in this section in your last days or weeks prior to the exam. It’s a big accomplishment to have made it this far, but you’re not at the end of your journey yet. Keep studying strong until the end to ensure you reach your full scoring potential.

Thank you again for choosing Achievable GRE. We’ve put a lot of love into the product, and we really hope you’ve enjoyed your time with us. If you have any feedback, please let us know!