How many hours to Study per day for GRE?

I have over 5 months for GRE, but I'm not sure how many hours to study for GRE. I'm spending atleast 2-3 hours per day. I don't spend much time daily on college courses. always we have study holiday to get through the subjects.

But, I cant study just 10 days for GRE and expect to score 1300 or more. Since my practice test score was 1100 plus, I'm confident with 3 hours preperation per day, I will be able to improve my score.

Also, I'm planning to attend GRE coaching classes in Chennai. I have to figure out if those coaching centers are really worth, if not I will tart pending more time in a day to GRE.

Usually 1 hour I spend with word list and 2 hours in Math. I need to spend 2 hours or more for Verbal and 1 hours should be enough for Math.

Going to US in Tough Economy

I had an interesting discussion with my friends today. Few of my friends are still not sure of they want to go to U.S. in this economy. They are not sure if job will be available after completing M.S.

I did read few articles that say economy will be good in 1-2 years time. That's when I will be going to US for education. But, in any case, US education is much better than studying in India. 

I'm going to make all possible attempt to get good score in GRE, TOEFL and then comes University selection, Student Visa and much landing in U.S.

So, its easy to say the steps involved, but its takes lots time and effort to get things done on time. So, the road to U.S. goes through GRE Exam. 

Do I have to study for TOEFL?

Everyone around me is taking TOEFL exam after GRE. Maybe because its easy to score the minimum required TOEFL scores or if we prepare for GRE, scoring in TOEFL is easy. But, I'm going to study for TOEFL. It will be hard to just prepare for TOEFL for just 1 month and score 100+. Students who have good reading habits, have natural tendency to score good marks in TOEFL. But, other than that I plan to listen to few english audio and see how I can score in practice test.

I haven't purchased any books for TOEFL yet, I plan to search online and use some pdf tutorials and download few practice questions. I'm studying 3rd wordslist in barrons, and still long way to go. I will keep writing about my GRE practice test and see how I improve the scores.

Improving GRE Score - I need help

I know it will be hard to improve my GRE Score. It takes lots of time. I'm trying to score more than 500 in GRE Verbal. But, most of my seniors who took GRE last year, said GRE Verbal is the hardest part of GRE Exam.

Few of my seniors got 800 out of 800 in GRE Maths, but Verbal highest scores was 510. So, I'm not sure how students scores more than 1300 in GRE. Is there any real magic to improve GRE Verbal Score? I wish there is a magic wand that I can take with me to GRE Exam. Harry Potter...I need your wand!

GRE Practice Test - ETS - Scored 1110

I have read few articles that said about not taking ETS Powerprep software until the last week before GRE exam, but I decided to to give it a try. that will hemp me search schools based on average GRE score required for admission.

I have spend so much time within some 10 universities, but most of the schools are not saying the Minimum GRE score required for admission. So, its really hard to search the school. That's the reason I took ETS powerprep exam few hours back.

1110 was my score, which is more than what I expected. I plan to take it after 2 months of preparation. I just started to study for GRE and I was able to get 1110. My friends who took GRE scored 890, 950. So, I'm bit better than them :)

GRE Big Book

I was searching for GRE Big book in local book shops here in my town. Also, I searched to see if GRE Big Book is available for sale in major book shops in Chennai, India. But, I couldn't find any copies.

One of my friend is having a soft copy of the book. I plan to use that. But, its will be much easier to study from hard copy. If anyone reading this blog has a hard copy of the book, I would appreciate if you can write a comment to this article on how you got the book and where I can buy one.

Do I have to Take GRE to Study in U.S.

Graduate Record Exam is required for admission into most of the universities in U.S. I spent several hours browsing for universities that accepts students without GRE Score. But, schools that I came across are not top ranked. 

In fact schools accepting students without GRE is not ranked within Top 60 US News Rank. I compared schools for MS in Computer Science. 

SO, I'm not sure if its worth studying in such schools, since amount of money we have to spend is almost the same if we study in the schools that accept students with GRE Score.

Advantages of Studing in U.S.

Graduate school is definitely an eye opening experience. Staying in U.S. is good learning experience. International students here have variety of experience to share. Every student who comes to U.S. from different country have to go through so many different things, face different situations, even the smell of the place will be different. But, so many sacrifice is done just to get that degree and exposure from an American University. So, what does a Graduate program offer in U.S. in addition to Bachelor's degree in India or in different country?

Research:

All the graduate courses are practical and research oriented. Professors who offer the course will be involved in research activity. So, the courses offered will be based on his research work. When most of the research in done in different universities, students tend to get hands on experience. Problem solving skills will improve and above all, they get to work with people form different walks of life.

Internships

Almost all the student work as intern during their course of Graduate Degree. That gives an window of opportunity to look into corporate world. So, the practical nature of education gives an opportunity to experience real work problem solving environment through internship.

Building on knowledge of what's known

With Bachelors degree from India is theory based. 6 Exams per semester and 2 Lab work. One exam at the end of the semester will determine the score for that semester. Masters degree will help to increase and improve the basic understanding received from the bachelors degree. that in turn leads to create new knowledge, facts and ideas.

Problem solving

The most important aspect of U.S. University and Education system is to improve the problem solving skills. Each and every course, project, home work is deigned and developed to improve problem solving skills of the student. Problems will be so complex, thereby extending the limits of one's skills. It provokes the mind to think in new direction.

Adviser / advisee mentoring

Professors pay individual attention to each students. Walking into their office with problems, will make you realize knowledge is tine what you have learned so far and there are miles of knowledge to be learned.

GRE Books

For GRE Exam preparation, there are many books available. But, almost all the students will have Barrons GRE Study Guide and lots of other books, like

1) GRE Big Book
2) Kaplan GRE Verbal Guide
3) Cracking the GRE - Princeton Review
4) Kaplan GRE Math Workbook
5) Kaplan Verbal - Reading Compreshnsion book
6) Novapress - GRE Math workbook ( best book for maths)

For wordlist, we all use Barrons wordlist. Its huge and we are trying hard to read and remember the words.

Plans for this Blog

Hello Visitors, we have very good student network and all our friends are preparing for GRE Exam. We have very huge collection of websites and links to GRE exam preparation materials. 

We plan to write about those links and also, as Eveline of use take GRE exam, we will be writing out GRE exam experience, schools we forwarded the GRE exam scores. 

Since we are kinda new to managing the blog, it will take time to get things set and have a clean, good looking layout. We will be rearranging the sidebar contents, till proper and valuable widgets are found. Till then bear with us. 

When To Take GRE Exam?

GRE Exam should be usually written atleast 1 year before you plan to apply to colleges in U.S. We are preparing to apply for Fall 2010 semester. We plan to take GRE in August 2009. That will give us 1 enough time to apply to schools in U.S.

After taking GRE, we would need atleast 2 months to select universities and another 1 month to apply to colleges. Since best schools in U.S. have deadlines in month of Nov/Dec, we plan to send the applications before Christmas vacations.

But, there are universities that take application as late as March, April 2010 for Fall 2010 semester. But most of the good schools will have deadlines by end of 2009.

I have looked at few schools and most of the schools I plan to apply have deadline in Dec. Also, its based on my GRE Score, if I will be able to apply to those schools. So, lets hope I get the to score above 1300 in GRE Exam.

About

I'm going to write about my GRE Experience along with few friends. We are bunch of college students who are preparing for GRE and TOEFL. As we are preparing for GRE and find useful contents, we will pass it along. So, far there were only outgoing links to other websites containing GRE information. But, going forward, fresh articles will be updated.

Contact

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to write a comment to any of the articles. We are in process of setting up contact from, that will make job much easier for you to contact us.