Eight Week Plan


The eight-week study plan will provide you with ample preparation for the GRE. Even if you are not familiar with the test format or if you have never taken the GRE before, 8 weeks is ample time for preparation. During the course of the 8-week study plan, you'll become acquainted with the format of the test; you'll study the verbal, math, and essay components of the exam. Eight weeks is enough to review hundreds of words and to learn approximately 300 new words. You'll be utilizing the vocabulary tutor on a daily basis as part of your studies.

The eight-week study plan will provide you with ample preparation for the GRE. Even if you are not familiar with the test format or if you have never taken the GRE before, 8 weeks is ample time for preparation. During the course of the 8-week study plan, you'll become acquainted with the format of the test; you'll study the verbal, math, and essay components of the exam. Eight weeks is enough to review hundreds of words and to learn approximately 300 new words. You'll be utilizing the vocabulary tutor on a daily basis as part of your studies. During the course of the eight weeks, you'll go over most of the practice questions that are available on MyGRETutor.com. Expect to spend up to 2 hours each day, 6 days each week, for 8 whole weeks, for a total of 96 hours of study time.

During the first week of the 8-week study plan, you will become familiar with the majority of the components of the GRE test. You should take your time and thoroughly understand the content of the tutorials and you should emphasize to try and fully understand each of the practice questions. Do not try to memorize many words, but instead try to gain exposure to the type of words that you'll expect to see on the GRE.

You'll need to spend at least 6 days in preparing for the GRE, spending 2 hours each day, for a total of 12 hours. Here is a sample plan:

  • Day 1: Become familiar with the format and features of the GRE, including timing tactics, adaptive testing, scoring and section order. These and other relevant topics are all discussed in the tutorials section of MyGRETutor.com. The first day is an introduction day, where you become acquainted with the GRE. Think back to what type of test taker you are. Do you speed through questions? Do you tend to jump around from question to question, doing the easy ones first and then going on to the hard ones? Spend the last 30 minutes of your study time learning new vocabulary words. Go through a handful of words to get a feel of the difficulty level that you'll experience on the real GRE. In 30 minutes, you should strive to view approximately 20 new vocabulary words. When viewing a vocabulary whose definition you do not know, read the definition out loud, and use the word in a sentence.
  • Day 2: Go over the Arithmetic tutorials sections, and do approximately 10 question of the practice questions for that section. Don't do all of the practice questions quite yet, because you'll have time in future weeks to finish most of the questions. Remember, you want to slowly absorb the tutorial and website information, because if you rush, there is a good chance that any new knowledge will retain in your short-term memory only, and so that won't help you during the exam.
  • Day 3: Spend this day on vocabulary building.
  • Day 4: On this day, complete the Algebra tutorials section, and complete approximately 10 practice questions on that topic. Finish the day with more vocabulary practice.
  • Day 5: On the fifth day of the first week, complete the Text Completion section of the tutorials. Like you've done before, complete approximately 10 of each question type in the practice questions section. Finish with vocabulary practice.
  • Day 6: On day 6, complete the essay tutorials section, and become familiar with the type and scope of the essay topics that you'll be given.

Week Study Plan for Math Component of GRE

During the course of the week, you'll have ample time to go over all of the tutorial sections that pertain to arithmetic, algebra, and geometry. While you are doing this, not that most of the math content is the type of math that you'd expect in 8th or 9th grade, at the most. Although you may experience tricky equations, there are no questions from trigonometry, calculus, or any similar high level math. But be warned, because that doesn't mean that the GRE math questions are easy. For the math component of the GRE, you will need to know or at least be familiar with the following:

  • Simple arithmetic such as addition, subtraction and multiplication.
  • Exponents and percentages.
  • Be able to compute simple probabilities and execute counting problems.
  • Be proficient with simple algebra, including equations and inequalities.
  • Be familiar with Geometry, including solid geometry, lines and angles, parallel lines, as well as volumes.

Week Study Plan for Verbal Component of GRE

Here are the three main question types for the verbal component of the GRE:

  • Text Completion: You will be presented with one or several sentences, with a single, two, or three blanks. If the sentence that you are shown has a single blank, then you will have five answer choices, but if the sentence has two or three blanks, you will see three answer choices for each blank. Your task is to select that choice(s) for each blank so that the sentence is coherent and correct.
  • Reading comprehension: The bulk of the questions that you will see on the verbal sections of the GRE revised General Test will be reading comprehension questions. There are three types: single answer,, multiple answers, and select in passage. The passages range in length from a single paragraph, to three or more paragraphs. Most of the reading passages are short.
  • Sentence Equivalence: You will be presented with a short snippet of text with a single blank, along with six answer choices. Your task is to select TWO of the answer choices, so that when either of them is inserted into the blank, the sentence is grammatically, stylistically, and logically correct. Moreover, the two answer choices that you select should generate sentences that are similar in meaning.

Week Study Plan for Essay Component of GRE

Essay writing is one of those things that takes years of practice, and so do not expect to learn how to write well over the course of four weeks, especially it has been a long time since you have written anything. You can, however, learn what to expect on test day, and if you know the format and the grader expectations of the your essays, then you should do just fine. If you haven't written in a long time, then we recommend that you glance over the different essay topics that you'll find on the GRE website. All of the topics for both the issue and argument essay are listed on the GRE website, but because there are so many of them, it is not feasible to prepare and memorize an essay for each topic. However, just glancing at the list should give you an idea of what the topics are like. Look at these topics, and brainstorm on ideas and themes that you could write about if you were given those topics. There are two essays that you'll be asked to write:

  • Issue Essay: You are given a single essay topic, and you have 30 minutes to write a personal response.
  • Argument Essay: You have no choice for the essay topic; you are presented with an snippet of an argument or an editorial, and you are allotted 30 minutes to critique the effectiveness of the provided statement.