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An American girl offered to help Abhinav Kumar Sharma with his GRE Test Prep. He scored 15 points higher with just 15 days of GRE Prep.

This article is the second article written by Abhinav. In his first article – Mentality of Indians : Demotivating and Awful and he talks about an American Girl who volunteered to teach him GRE.

Sorry to hear about your dad.

Enter Abhinav… How to Improve GRE Score Second Time

Hello friends,

My name is Abhinav Sharma and I hope only few people might remember me in this blog.

Sorry, I was busy with my family and my application process. Sorry for not posting my experience of GRE and how to improve GRE Score second time by 20 points in 15 days

I actually lost my Dad earlier this year so this is the main reason I was busy with stuff.

How to Improve GRE Score Second Time

Well not beating around the bush coming to the point, let me tell you what everyone were asking me about that girl and what did she tell me during those 15 days of GRE Test Prep.

Learning from my faults

She talked with me about my failures and my old scores.

My first GRE was 290.

• Quantitative score  : 150
• Verbal Score : 140
• Analytic writing : 2.5

On the first day she told me write what an organisation think for its employees.

I mean she saw my basic level is really good but I didn’t had proper vocabulary list. So I learnt some specific words and formats for my essays.

I worked on writing 1 essay on issue and 1 on analytic writing every day. She just checked it that’s all which your college’s English professor can do for you.

Working Hard

Worked hard not because I want to go US or Canada.

• Worked hard because I want to get out of this worse government rules in India.
• Worked hard because she was helping me a lot.
• Worked hard because when people get involve with you, you always get some motivation.

Honestly motivation only comes when you loose something big.

I never failed in any of my exam of life. This time when I lost it I felt like sh*t.  I studied for just 4 – 5 hours a day.

Enjoyment with refreshment

Believe it or not, we Indian people cram a lot.

Yeah, that’s true, just to pass exam. I did too in past when didn’t get any derivation or formula in my head.

But after a short fun refreshing breaks like going outdoor for long walks, playing some games, etc. I was able to boost my score from 290 to 300+

Other Things Learned

• Motivation from your surroundings like be with those people who are not showing off personality.
• Less use of social networking sites like, Facebook, twitter, etc.
• Positive thinking which is hard when you already had low score, but trust me what made me more  patient is proper meditation. I did it and it helped me reducing my stress levels.
• Carefully develop the picture where you want to go and what if you won’t get it?
• Analyse daily life problems and try to solve them in your mind. Like if I get 2kg milk weekdays and  2.5Kg on weekends and it cost me Rs.24/Kg. Then how much it will cost me in July month.
• During weekends try to work on your mistakes and schedule timing. Forget if you are running out of timing. If any section remained there then leave it, just go to net department of exam.

Last but not the least, remain honest with your results. Believe me no matter ‘Practice makes man perfect” and this is 100% truth.

This is all what she told me and it helped me a lot.

Honestly saying I was really depressed from all those people who said those wrong words. Rather than motivating they were just blah.

I am not going to say anything wrong about them, but other truth is this; everyone wants to have comfort life.

In India, we all dream so big, some try harder but not effectively.

Some always get busy in collecting books and other data from teachers and some always waste time in reading articles.

Quantity is nothing if you don’t have quality.

I got admit in UTA, Virginia tech and Georgia tech.

I applied to 6 Universities and got reply from three and one rejection.

Two application results are awaiting but I am not going to wait more than my limits.

Yesterday I gave confirmation to my University where I am going and I am happy.

I know I will get rejection in Visa process because I don’t have much support and even having 60-80% scholarship from Virginia Tech and Georgia universities.

But oh well, I believe in God so I am sure there will be something more to come.

In the end I just want to request everyone, never let anyone down, always give them a hope. Expectations are worthless. Do good in life and get good in life.

//

What do you think about this stranger offering help to motivate Abhinav to boost his score by 20 points?

> Following post on When to Take the GRE Exam is shared by HSB Fan.

Note to Raghu: I haven’t really been an active member of the blog, though I’ve lurked here for quite some time. Your blog has been incredibly useful, and I think you’re doing a truly great job here!
I’ve applied for Public Health programs for Fall’13.

I scored a 164V/164Q/4.0 AWA on the GRE, and 118/120 on the TOEFL.

I’ve been helping out a few friends with their test prep and SOPs etc, and I thought this might be a better way to reach out to a larger number of applicants.

This is more of intro type thing to the GRE, and I have tons of ideas for other posts (GRE/TOEFL/SOPs/selecting schools etc) if you think they might be useful (I LOVE writing in general, and the fact that this might actually help people out is just icing on the cake:)) Now for the actual post.

The GRE is an intimidating exam, to say the least.

Five odd hours of testing is not easy by any means, and most students are stressed out at the prospect of taking an exam that might just decide the college they end up at.

When to Take the GRE Exam?

Deadlines for college applications are usually December to March, with most of them clustered in December/January.

In my opinion, the best time to take the exam would be in August/September, leaving you with enough time to receive the scores, and to schedule a retake, if required.

If your end score is not to your liking, it is definitely a good idea to retake a test because of 3 reasons:

Importance of GRE in Admission Process

While there are different opinions on exactly how much importance an admissions committee places on the GRE scores, it makes sense to get the best score you possibly can.

GPAs tend to differ across different colleges and majors, LORs are usually generic and carry relatively little weight-age unless written by star professors and most(not all!) candidates have similar profiles in terms of SOPs and resumes.

In such cases, GRE scores are a somewhat reliable, standardized way of judging an applicant.

A higher GRE score, at the very least, will ensure that your application is at least given a good look by the committee.

While few people like the idea of shelling out the exam fee again, an extra 175$ is not too much in the larger scheme of things when you take into account that retaking it might get you into a much better college, which in turn equals better prospects with respect to jobs/salaries.

So scrimping on the GRE fee might just cost you thousands of dollars potentially in terms of lost opportunities in the future!

Re-take GRE vs Performance

Most people perform better the second time they take the exam, simply because they already have an idea of what to expect and are more confident and less likely to blank out due to nervousness.

That said, retaking the exam is a waste of money if you do not use the intervening time to work on the weaknesses you might have identified the first time around.

Since you are more familiar with the pattern, it makes sense to work on strategies targeting the sections/type of questions that lowered your score on the first try.

GRE ScoreSelect

The GRE ScoreSelect option is a nifty and VERY useful tool introduced by ETS in July 2012.

You have an option of selecting which scores you want to report, helpful in cases where you don’t want adcoms to know the number of times you took the exam, or in case you end up scoring lower the second time around.

Be aware, though, that scores are reported in entirety, and not section wise.