GRE Study Schedule

August 09, 2010

Your GRE study schedule is essential for success. I’ve found that most students applying to graduate school have exceptionally busy lives, and GRE studying is not going to just spontaneously happen. While sticking too rigidly to a schedule can be detrimental, not having one is even worse!

Let’s talk about how to plan those hours, and use them in the most effective way.

Planning Your Time

The first thing you’ve got to do is get yourself a calendar.

You can print a free one online, buy one at an office supply store, make one, or use your Blackberry, Google calendar or iPhone. Your calendar will help keep you accountable. While it is not necessary to plan all of your study time, week by week, in one shot (that plan may be too rigid to follow), it will be worth it to plan your time week by week, at least. This way you can take into account holidays, family/work obligations, weekends out of town, etc.

You should print a two month calendar. Eight weeks is ideal for your GRE study schedule. Some students stretch the time out for much longer than that, but end up battling burnout. The best thing for you to do is to do it once, do it right, and get it finished. You do have other things on your plate, after all (like your applications)!

Preparing Your Mind

As you sit down to plan these hours, have a little chat with yourself. For the next eight weeks, GRE needs to be the priority. It trumps some of your social events, it may trump sleeping in on weekends, and it trumps staying after work to get brownie points.

This is the one quantifiable part of your application over which you currently exert 100% control. Your GPA is finished (or mostly finished), right? Schools will not see how dedicated of a friend you were for attending that holiday party that you didn’t really want to go to! In short, some things in your schedule must give in order to make this time. What can’t give is sleep, work, eating, and healthy activity.

Preparing Your Hours

I’d recommend eight to ten hours each week for your GRE study schedule.

Week one should begin with you taking a practice GRE test, to get a sense of where your strengths and weaknesses lie. Most students begin with relearning the multiplication tables, and studying vocabulary.

Flashcards will be a permanent fixture in your study schedule, but once you’ve got those multiplication tables down pat, you can review all of the other key math concepts in Total GRE Math.

Your eight to ten weekly hours should involve 1.5 hours of study on most evenings during the week, with the rest of the time (about 5 to 7 more hours) spread out over the weekend. Please do not attempt to study for more than 2 hours at a time without a serious break. The brain’s capacity for retention declines significantly after this point.

Remember, you’re not doing this homework so that you can turn it in and get a grade. The things you are learning during your study time need to be things you carry with you in your mental toolbox on test day. In short, you’ve got to remember this stuff!

Your Rewards

Every minute of effective study you put into the GRE will come back to you on test day. While these results may be slow in coming at first, you can be assured that if you prepare properly for the content and strategies needed on the GRE, you can rock this test.

It’s going to take no small commitment on your part, though. Be ready. Get a calendar!

Jeff Sackmann is a test-prep tutor based in New York City and the author of Total GRE Math, among other GRE and GMAT resources.

Need a better Quant score? Check out Total GRE Math.