GRE
There is no syllabus to prepare for GRE — verbal and quantitative reasoning are tested as skills, each raised by practising the question types you get wrong, never by revising a topic list, so a content cram the week before will move neither score. Each measure runs across a pair of timed sections, and the questions you see are not identical to everyone else’s, so your reported score already weighs how many you got right against the difficulty of the section you were given.
A separate writing task is judged for its reasoning and structure, by a human reader and an automated check together. Set two targets, not one: a program may weight verbal and quantitative differently, so track your practice apart for each measure, sorted by the question types that trip you up.
Because your score already weighs the difficulty of the section you sat, comparing a raw count of right answers against someone else’s tells you less than the reported number already does. You see both reasoning scores at the test centre the moment the test ends; the writing score is not among them, since it takes longer to judge and arrives only with your official report.
Build your season around the two scores you will be judged on, not one total — sort your practice by weak question type, and keep verbal and quantitative tracked apart. Read the exact timings and scoring detail from the box.
Open this cycle’s own GRE Information Bulletin and one practice section for each reasoning measure. Answer the four questions from them: what question types appear, what the marker pays for, what a miss costs, and how much time each section gives you. Write the four answers down before you start a single week of practice.
Revising vocabulary lists close to the test must still help, the way every other exam is prepared for.
Not this one. GRE moves on a skill built over months, the way any trained skill improves — by practice at the type of question you get wrong, with feedback each time. A word list read the week before adds nothing, because the test measures a reasoning skill, and nothing read the week before moves one. A season on weak question types, tracked apart for each measure, is what moves the two numbers.
GRE: check the current notice
As read on 14 September 2026 in ETS’s own GRE Information Bulletin, modified 26 June 2026, and its Interpreting Your GRE Scores 2026-27 guide. The board below carries the numbers; ETS changes them, the shape does not. Confirm in the current notice: whether an unscored, unidentified section is still included, a feature of the format used before 22 September 2023. Also confirm the current test fee, and the test-date calendar and registration deadline.