1 Month Magoosh GRE Study Schedule

8/20/2019 1 Month Magoosh GRE Study Schedule

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Good luck on the GRE! If you have any feedback, please leave us a comment on theMagoosh GRE Blog1 Month GRE Study Schedule post. ☺

OK, you are starting more or less from scratch, and you want to prepare for the GRE in one

month. You need a strategic plan to organize yourself. Fasten your seatbelts!

Note: This is a detailed, s tep-by-step daily breakdown of the 1 month schedule—if you’d like more

broad goals and tasks for every week with less focus on math basics, you should use the

“general” version.

Essential Materials:

1. MagooshGRE Prep

2. ETS’s Official Guide to the GRE book - If you already own a 1st edition of the Official

Guide, don’t feel you have to buy the 2nd edition. The only difference between the two

books is that the 2nd edition has an extra practice test at the very back. If you run out of

practice tests, then you might want to pick up the 2nd edition even if you already own the

1st.

3. ETS’s PowerPrep Software

a. If you would prefer to take the practice test on paper, you can print out ETS’s

practice test PDF (with video explanations here). Take note that the Powerprepsoftware and the paper-based test have overlapping material, so it won’t be of

much help to do both, unless you space them out far enough so that you won’t

recognize the questions and answers! I recommend using the Powerprep software

if you can, since taking the test on a computer is a better simulation of exam day

conditions. You can now use Powerprep for Mac.

4. A journal or notebook (yes, a physical hard copy item)

5. Magoosh’s online GRE flashcards. They’re free and you can use them on the web, on

your iPhone/iPad or Android.

6 . N o t ec ar d s ( o r Quizlet.com)

Supplemental/Optional Materials:

● E a sy m a ga zi n es : Time, Newsweek, Scientific American (start low…but not too low; these

magazines are still filled with decent content)

● D i f f ic ul t m a ga zi n es : Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, The Economist

● Vocabulary.com: provides conversation definitions and a flood of example sentences

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https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/magoosh/gre-vocabulary-flashcards/id672962658https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.magoosh.flashcards.grehttp://gre.magoosh.com/flashcardshttp://gre.magoosh.com/flashcardshttp://gre.magoosh.com/videos-for-revised-gre-paper-testhttp://www.ets.org/gre/revised_general/prepare/powerprep2/downloadhttp://www.ets.org/gre/revised_general/prepare/powerprep2/downloadhttp://gre.magoosh.com/http://gre.magoosh.com/http://magoosh.com/gre/2011/30-day-gre-study-guide/http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek.htmlhttp://gre.magoosh.com/videos-for-revised-gre-paper-testhttp://magoosh.com/gre/2011/30-day-gre-study-guide/http://www.economist.com/http://gre.magoosh.com/flashcardshttp://gre.magoosh.com/http://magoosh.com/gre/2012/1-month-gre-study-schedule/http://www.time.com/time/http://www.amazon.com/Official-Guide-Revised-General-Edition/dp/007179123X/ref=dp_ob_title_bk?ie=UTF8&qid=1318979846&sr=8-1https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/magoosh/gre-vocabulary-flashcards/id672962658http://quizlet.com/http://www.ets.org/gre/revised_general/prepare/powerprep2/downloadhttp://www.scientificamerican.com/http://www.vocabulary.com/dictionaryhttps://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.magoosh.flashcards.grehttp://www.newyorker.com/http://www.theatlantic.com/http://magoosh.com/gre/2012/powerprep-for-mac/


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● Word Dynamo (Dictionary.com): gives you little quizzes & games to add some variety to

vocab learning

● Magoosh iPhone/Android app, for mobile practice

A note on learning GRE vocabulary:

First of all, it’s important not only to learn the literal dictionary definition (the denotation), but also to

understand the metaphorical use of the word in context (the connotation). For example, the word

“opaque” literally means “not transparent”, but metaphorically it can means “hard to understand”

or, describing a person, it can mean “thick-headed, stupid.” Ultimately, you should strive to learn

both the denotation and the connotation of each word.

Daily review of vocab is vital. I wrote this schedule recommending the Magoosh’s GRE

Flashcards, but DO NOT limit yourself to just these words. AS YOU READ and find more words

you don’t know, look them up, make flashcards (including context), and make your ow n flashcard

decks. You could have one pile for words whose denotation you are trying to master, anothercontaining words for which you know the denotation but not the connotation, and a “done” stack

that gets reviewed only rarely.

A note on the prep books:

Don’t write in any of the test prep books, because for any of them, after a period of time you may

want to go back and do a problem again that you haven’t seen for a while. You can only start it

fresh if the page is free of your marks.

This one-month plan is a furiously intense pace, designed to have a person improve as much aspossible in a month’s time. I have designed four weeks, assuming 2-3 hours for each of the five

weekdays, and one 5-6 stint on the weekend (“Day Six”). If you would prefer to work on both

weekend days, and free up some weeknight time, feel free to make those changes. Note: Many

folks find that each day’s assignments take 2-3 hours, although times to complete them will vary

for different students. It is possible that a day’s assignments will take significantly longer.

Also, as much as possible, get enough sleep during this month. REM sleep plays an important

role in encoding long term memory, and in an eight hour period of sleep, the last hour has the

most REM. If you are getting 7 hours/night instead of 8 hours/night, you are depriving your brain

of one of its most powerful systems for learning and remembering. Caffeine and energy drinks will

keep you feeling awake if you don’t get enough sleep, but they don’t do bupkis to replace the lost

opportunity to encode more information into long term memory.

I realize it will be hard both to follow this plan diligently and get 8+ hr/night of sleep if you are

working full-time. If you are working full-time, I would say it will be very hard to improve as much

as you could in only one month’s time, and I would recommend pushing the test date a little further

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back, if possible. If that’s not possible, then just do as much of this plan as you can, as much as

time will allow.

Let’s get started!

Week One, Day One

1) Go to ETS.org, and read about the content of the GRE. Click on and read each sub-heading

link.

2) In the Official Guide:

● Read Chapter 1 “Introducing the GRE revised General Test”

● Read Chapter 2 “GRE Analytic Writing”–skim or skip the example essays and the

commentary on them, and read everything else

● Read Chapter 3 “GRE Verbal Reasoning”–just the introductory pages, before the Sample

Question Set

● Read Chapter 5 “GRE Quantitative Reasoning”–just the introductory pages, before the

Sample Questions

3) Start reading through the GRE Math Review in the Official Guide, up to the Arithmetic

Exercises. Take notes in your journal on whatever is unfamiliar. Do the Arithmetic Exercises and

correct your answers.

NOTE: Many GRE test takers struggle with remembering math, so for these readers, I am

suggesting this first week working through of the Official Guide’s Math Review section. If you are

someone for whom math comes easily, I would say skim this section, do the exercises, and spend

the rest of the time devoted to this building your vocabulary, using our flashcards and possibly

more, such as Princeton Review’s book Word Smart .

4) In Magoosh Lessons, watch the following videos:

● In Math: under “Integer Properties”, the first ten videos in that section

● In Verbal: under “Text Completion – Overview”, the first three videos in that section

If the content in the video is new to you or relatively unclear, take notes on it in your journal. If the

content is very familiar, feel free to click ahead to the summary at the end, just to verify that you

understand it all.

Week One, Day Two

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1) Continue reading through the GRE Math Review, up to about halfway through the Algebra

section. Take notes in your journal on whatever is unfamiliar.


● In Math: under “Integer Properties”, the last five videos in that section

● In Math: under “Arithmetic and Fractions”, the first eight videos in that section● In Verbal: under “Text Completion – Overview”, the last three videos in that section

● In Verbal: under “Sentence Equivalence”, the first three videos in that section

3) In Magoosh’s GRE Flashcards, begin and master a new deck, if possible.

4) In Magoosh Practice, do at least 20 Math Multiple choice math questions, by filtering for “Math”

in Section. Check off all of the Subjects (Algebra, Coordinate Geometry, Data Interpretation, etc.),

set the Difficulty to “Adaptive”, Question Pool to “Unanswered”, Time to “No Limit”, and Mode to

“Practice Mode”. You are not entering a practice time beforehand, but keep a pace of 90 seconds

per question, or 15 minutes for 10 questions.

Notice you are doing all topics from the get-go, whether you have already studied these or not.

This means that you will make some mistakes at the beginning: see this post on a productive

attitude toward making mistakes. If, after a week or so of practice, you find that there is simply too

much new material for you, then narrow your studies to those topics you're more actively studying

plus one or two that you're unfamiliar with. You should be constantly challenged. If you do narrow

the topics of study, expand back to as wide a scope as possible as quickly as possible.

For each Magoosh problem, after you submit your answer, on the next page which tells you

whether you were right or wr ong, there’s a video solution and below that a text summary. If yougot the question right, skim the text summary to verify you got it right for the right r eason. If you

got the question wrong, watch the video, taking notes in your journal about any concept or any

aspect of the question type that was unclear to you.

Week One, Day Three

1) Continue reading the GRE Math Review, up to the Algebra Exercises. Take notes in your

journal on whatever is unfamiliar. Do the Algebra Exercises and correct your answers.


● In Math: under “Arithmetic and Fractions”, the last eight videos

● In Math: under “Percents and Ratios”, up to “Percent Increases and Decreases”

● In Verbal: under “Sentence Equivalence”, the last three videos in that section

● In Verbal: under “Reading Comprehension”, the first four videos in that section

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3) In Magoosh’s GRE Flashcards, begin and master a new deck, if possible. Spend 10 – 30

minutes reviewing previous decks, completing any that are started but not yet mastered.

4) In Magoosh Practice, do at least 20 Math Multiple choice math questions, by filtering for Math in

Section. Check off all of the Subjects (Algebra, Coordinate Geometry, Data Interpretation, etc.),

set the Difficulty to “Adaptive”, Question Pool to “Unanswered”, Time to “No Limit”, and Mode to“Practice Mode”.

Week One, Day Four

1) Continue reading the GRE Math Review, up to the Geometry Exercises. Take notes in your

journal on whatever is unfamiliar. Do the Geometry Exercises and correct your answers.


● In Math: under “Percents and Ratios”, the last four videos in that section

● In Math: under “Algebra, Equations, Inequalities”, the first four videos in that section● In Math: under “Data Interpretation”, watch first two videos in that section

● In Verbal: under “Reading Comprehension”, the last seven videos in that section

● In Verbal: under “Paragraph Argument”, the first three videos in that section



4) In Magoosh Practice, do 20 Math Multiple choice math questions, all subjects.

Week One, Day Five

1) Continue reading through the GRE Math Review, up to about halfway through the Data

Analysis section. Take notes in your journal on whatever is unfamiliar.


● In Math: under “Algebra, etc”, up to “Factoring – Rational Expressions”

● In Math: under “Data Interpretation”, finish last two videos in that section

● In Verbal: under “Paragraph Argument”, watch all remaining videos in that section

● In Verbal: in “Vocabulary”, the first two videos

● In AWA: all ten videos in that section



4) In Magoosh Practice, do at least 20 Math Multiple choice math questions.

Week One, Day Six

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1) Finish reading through the GRE Math Review. Take notes in your journal on whatever is

unfamiliar. Do the Data Analysis Exercises and correct your answers.


● In Math: under “Algebra, etc”, up to “Three Equations with Three Unknowns”

3) Download and start reading the Magoosh GRE eBook. Continue reading whenever you have

the time over the course of the next two weeks.

4) Today, you are going to write two essays, half an hour each. You will write one Issue essay

and one Argument essay.

The good news is that any prompt that you could possibly see test day is already on ETS.org.

There are hundreds of essays for both the Argument and Issue. You can choose the essay atrandom, or you might want to choose an essay topic that seems challenging to you. Write the

essay in a word processing program. If you can turn off the spell check all the better–you won’t

have the luxury of spell check test day.

Now that you have these essays, what do you do with them? If you have a friend or mentor who is

a gifted writer, see if they would read the essays for you and critique them. If they are willing, you

can show them the assessment criteria in the Official Guide, and ask them to follow it. If you can’t

convince anyone else to read it, you may try posting them on on of the free GMAT club forums,

and see whether an expert there will critique your essay. Failing either of these options, at least

you can set the essays aside, and in a couple days re-read them with the Official Guide’s rubricbeside you.

Week Two, Day One


● In Math: under “Algebra, etc”, up to “Function Notation”

● In Verbal: under “Text Completion – No Shifts”, the first two videos of that section

● In Verbal: in “Vocabulary”, the next two videos



3) In Magoosh Practice, do the following questions at minimum.

● 10 Multiple choice math questions

● 5 Quantitative comparison math questions

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● 5 Text completion verbal questions

● 5 Sentence equivalence verbal questions

● 5 Reading comprehension verbal questions

● 3 Paragraph argument verbal questions

Week Two, Day Two


● In Math: under “Algebra, etc”, the last five videos of that section

● In Verbal: under “Text Completion – No Shifts”, the last two videos of that section

● In Verbal: in “Vocabulary”, the next two videos



3) In Magoosh Practice, do the following questions at minimum● 20 Multiple choice math questions


● 3 Data interpretation questions





Week Two, Day Three


● In Math: under “Word Problems”, the first two videos of that section

● In Verbal: under “Text Completion – Sentence Shifts”, the first two videos of that section

● In Verbal: in “Vocabulary”, the next three videos











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Week Two, Day Four


● In Math: under “Word Problems”, up to “Shrinking and Expanding Gaps”

● In Verbal: under “Text Completion – Sentence Shifts”, to up “Time Shifts”

● In Verbal: in “Vocabulary”, the remaining videos








● 5 Reading comprehension verbal questions● 2 Paragraph argument verbal questions

Week Two, Day Five


● In Math: under “Word Problems”, up to “Sums of Sequences”

● In Verbal: under “Text Completion – Sentence Shifts”, to up “Multiple Shifts”











Week Two, Day Six

1) Today, you are going to write two essays, half an hour each. You will write one Issue essay

and one Argument essay.

For topics, go back to the GMAT Club Forums, and click a post at random to assign yourself a

topic. Write the essays in Word.

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When done, share the essays with a trusted friend/mentor, or post in the GMAT forum, or set

aside and critique it yourself with the Official Guide rubric in a few days.

2) In the Official Guide:

● Do the Verbal Reasoning Practice Sets 1-6● Do the Quantitative Reasoning Practice Sets 1-4

Treat this as a mock GRE. You might even combine it with the two essays, and do consecutive

batches 2-3 set without interruption, to simulate more effectively a real GRE. Set a timer for the

time limits. Here are the time limits to observe:

● Verbal Reasoning Set 1 = 9 minutes




● Verbal Reasoning Set 5 = 10 minutes● Verbal Reasoning Set 6 = 10 minutes

● Quantitative Reasoning Set 1 = 22 minutes




After you are done, check all your answers. For any question you got right, skim the explanation to

verify that you got it right for the right reason. For any question you got wrong, read the

explanation thorough, taking notes in your journal on any concepts you didn’t understand and

anything about the question format that psyched you out. If you still can’t make sense of thequestion after reading the explanation, email us at Magoosh.

Week Three, Day One


● In Math: under “Word Problems”, the last three videos in that section

● In Verbal: under “Text Completion – Sentence Shifts”, the last three videos in that section







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Week Three, Day Two


● In Math: under “Coordinate Geometry”, the first six videos in that section

● In Verbal: under “Text Completion – Double Blanks”, the first two videos in that section




● 10 Multiple choice math questions● 2 Data interpretation questions






Week Three, Day Three


● In Math: under “Coordinate Geometry”, the last three videos in that section

● In Math: under “Geometry”, the first three videos in that section

● In Verbal: under “Text Completion – Double Blanks”, the last three videos in that section











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Week Three, Day Four


● In Math: under “Geometry”, up to “Polygons”

● In Verbal: under “Text Completion – Triple Blanks”, the first two videos in that section










Week Three, Day Five


● In Math: under “Geometry”, the last six videos in that section

● In Verbal: under “Text Completion – Triple Blanks”, up to “One Sentence Triple Blanks”










Week Three, Day Six


● In Math: under “Power and Roots”, the first eleven videos in that section

2) Today, you are going to take the hard copy practice GRE at the back of the Official Guide.

For the two essay questions, write the essays in a word processing program. These essays you

will either share with a trusted friend or mentor, or post in the online forums asking for feedback,

or critique later with the Official Guide rubric.

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As much as possible, try to mimic the GRE conditions. Give yourself relatively short breaks in

between sections. Only eat the kinds of snacks that you are planning to bring to the real GRE.

Note how your sleep the night before affects your work. Note how what you had for dinner the

previous night and what you had to eat earlier that day affects your energy level and

concentration. Write any observations in your journal.

Week Four, Day One


● In Math: under “Power and Roots”, the last four videos in that section

● In Math: under “Statistics”, all five videos in that section

● In Verbal: under “Text Completion – Triple Blanks”, the last three videos in that section





● 5 Multiple answer math questions (Section: “Math- Multiple Answer”)



● 10 Text completion verbal questions (Section: “Verbal- Text Completion”)

● 5 Sentence equivalence verbal questions● 5 Reading comprehension verbal questions


Week Four, Day Two


● In Math: under “Counting”, the first six videos in that section





● 10 Multiple answer math questions (Section: “Math- Multiple Answer”)




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● (Or substitute above with mock test)

Week Four, Day Three


● In Math: under “Counting”, the last five videos in that section






● 5 Numeric entry math questions● 5 Quantitative comparison math questions





Week Four, Day Four


● In Math: under “Probability”, the first six videos in that section





● 10 Numeric entry math questions





Week Four, Day Five


● In Math: under “Probability”, the last six videos in that section

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● 10 Numeric entry math questions● 5 Quantitative comparison math questions





● (Or substitute above with remaining practice test)

Week Four, Day Six

1) Today, you are going to take the practice GRE available through the GRE PowerPrepsoftware.

As much as possible, try to mimic the GRE conditions. Give yourself relatively short breaks in

between sections. Only eat the kinds of snacks that you are planning to bring to the real GRE.

Note how your sleep the night before affects your work. Note how what you had for dinner the

previous night and what you had to eat earlier that day affects your energy level and

concentration. Write any observations in your journal.

At the end, copy the essays you wrote into a Word doc, and as before, these you will share with a

trusted friend or mentor, or post in the online forums asking for feedback, or critique later with theOfficial Guide rubric.

Any Remaining Days

Keep working on GRE math and verbal every day. Suggestions

1) Keep watching 6-8 Magoosh videos a day. Go back and re-watch any videos where you think

you need to learn the topic more thoroughly.

2) You can try again Magoosh questions that you have already answered, and see if you do better

on the question the second time around.

3) Keep drilling your stack of vocab cards every day

4) An online search will turn up batches of GRE practice questions and free GREs you can take

online. If you have an extra day, take another full length GRE. If not, work on a couple sections

each day.

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Day before the test:

● N o GR E p r ep ar a t io n a l l d ay

● Eat a large, healthy, leisurely dinner – no alcohol!

● Go to bed earlier than usual.

Day of test

● A B S OL U T E LY N O L A S T M I N U T E G R E P R E P A R A T I ON !

● Eat a large breakfast, full of protein

● Do relaxing, fun activities to pass time until the test

Bring to the test

● A l it er o f w a te r● Healthy energy-packed snacks (nuts, protein bar, etc.)

● On breaks, make sure to get up, move & stretch – moving & stretching the large muscles

of the body (legs & torso) will get oxygen flowing throughout, which will help keep you

awake and keep you thinking clearly.

Pay less & test higher. Click here for more information.

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1 Month Magoosh GRE Study Schedule