What separates the high scorers from the average scorers? It’s not just mathematical ability and content knowledge. The high achievers also know a few tricks of the trade.
When you finish a problem, don’t just select the answer and move on. Try to make sure your answer makes sense in the problem. If there is a way to plug your answer back into the problem to verify it, do that. If the answer can be found a different way, try it to double-check if you have enough time. When you go too quickly, you might find yourself making silly mistakes.
It’s also a mind game! The top scorers get their heads completely into the game. In fact, the way that you can advance from middle-of-the-road to absolutely stellar is to have a growth mindset.
The GRE is unique in that it is given entirely online. You are not allowed to use your own calculator. Instead, there will be a calculator provided on the computer. For more details, check out our GRE Calculator guide.
One big piece of advice: Don’t immediately jump to the calculator for every problem! For one thing, the ETS Calculator (provided on the GRE) is a bit cumbersome to use if you’re used to working with a physical calculator. Pointing and clicking on the calculator is time-consuming. Make good use of your scratch paper instead.
Secondly, it will be a much better use of your time to think about the concepts within the problems rather than the computations involved. Often, problems are set up in a way to make the calculations easy, but if you approach them wrong you might waste time doing unnecessary button-pushing. Generally, you should avoid calculator use unless working out big multiplications, divisions, etc.