Have you ever wondered how do some candidates ace the GRE while the rest get disappointed by their scores. What is that the successful candidates do that gives them the advantage over others ? We tried determining whether there are any observable patterns in the preparation strategies of candidates and whether it is possible to categorize the candidates in such a way that a candidate who’s just kicking off his preparation can see which category is he likely to fall in and which category should he actually be in to do well on the exam ? After a lot of brainstorming, we were able to categorize the studying patterns of candidates in three patterns. Though there maybe exceptions, but a majority of the candidates fall into one of the three types mentioned below. Read on to see which pattern do you fall into and which type of candidate you should be ?

Type I: The Fizzlers

The typical candidate in this category starts his preparation with great enthusiasm. He’s filled with dreams of making it to the Ivy League and is motivated about cracking the GRE, for he knows that a good GRE score is an important determiner to his success. He kicks off his preparation with great excitement ,but a week into the preparation and he sees himself getting distracted by the far more interesting things or more important things in life.

Instead of keeping his preparation at the top of his priority list and keeping everything else on a backburner for the next 3 months, he fills his plate with too many things- college extra curriculars, project, parties, classes and what not. Not suprisingly,  the GRE preparation takes a backseat after a while. It is only towards the end of the preparation  that he realizes that he’s dangerously close to the exam. He starts studying day in and day out in the false hope that he can salvage himself and make up for what he didn’t study. Not surprisingly, this candidate comes back disappointed from the GRE test center.

Type-II : The Ideal Ones

The second type of candidate is the one who maintains consistency in his preparation right from the beginning. He’s one of those meticulous ones who makes a plan for himself, prioritizes his preparation over other things,sticks to his schedule, takes weekly off and does everything mentioned in The GRE Demystified.

In the 3rd month of his preparation, he accelerates his preparation and since he has been taking enough breaks from the preparation, he doesn’t even feel preparation to be an onerous task. After being on this  accelerator mode for 15-20 days,he starts decelerating as the exam starts approaching so that he doesn’t suffer from one of those “anxiety attacks” which a Type I candidate suffers from in the last few weeks . He knows the importance of decelerating at the end and knows that it will pay off on the exam. That’s why he doesn’t go crazy learning vocabulary in the last 3-4 days or learning a new concept in maths. These are the type of candidates who end up getting almost perfect scores and there’s no reason why they wouldn’t !

Type III: The Steady Ones

However, there’s a third category of candidates who are neither make unrealistic plans and end up becoming The Fizzlers nor do they perceive to be nearly God-like perfect candidates of the second category. The Steady Ones think of themselves as mere mortals and know that they end their social life and other pursuits abruptly and start studying for 3 hours consistently from day one as do the The Ideal Ones, for they know that if they try to do that, they’ll end up becoming The Fizzlers.

A candidate in this category believes in incremental progress and builds up the momentum slowly . How exactly does he accomplish it ? He does it by setting incremental targets for himself. For example, in the first week, he studies only for 20 minutes per day, then in the second week, he adds another block of 20 minutes per day to his schedule . In the third week, another 20 minutes. That is by the end of 8 weeks, he ends up making the GRE a strong component of his life and studying doesn’t seem to be a burden as he’d have built the stamina to study for aound 3 hours a day.This also ensures that he’s at the peak of his performance level by the time he takes his GRE. These candidates also return happy from the test -center!

Now ask yourself which of the above three category of candidates do you fall in and figure out which category would suit you the most! Get cracking the GRE!