Fall ’18: When should I give GRE & TOEFL?

Deciding on when to give your GRE is a matter of backtracking from your end destination - dream universities admit. Most top universities close their admission deadlines within Nov-Dec. It is also important to note that most universities advise you to get started on compiling your application at least 6 months before deadline.

 

Considering this particular guideline for your reference, it is imperative that you take GRE within June 2017.

 

Another important aspect in highlighting on your GRE date is to find out how much time you want to prepare for GRE properly. Based on an internal survey, most students who score a 320+ do preparation for 4 to 6 months. Particularly if you're in 3 rd year of engineering, a good timeline to follow is to start your online GRE preparation in Jan/Feb and continue till May. Ensure to have a proper GRE study guide and take a lot of free online GRE practice test - GRE maths practice tests, GRE mock test and GRE verbal practice test. Simultaneously, start your TOEFL prep in April. You're ready to give your GRE & TOEFL by end of June. (During your college vacations)

 

Once you're done with both, research and shortlist universities that best suit your aspirations. By August, you should have started the first draft of your SOP, selected your recommenders and applied for your college transcripts. By end of September, you should have all aspects of your application ready to go. Since priority deadlines for Fall '18 start even earlier than Nov, you can give yourself the best chance for admits + scholarships with this timeline.

 

What are Risks in Preparing GRE from Books?

 

GRE is purely an online based computer adaptive exam. An online exam like GRE needs an online practice to get used to the format. Secondly an adaptive of the exam is refers to the fact that based on your performance in one section, and the difficulty level of the next section changes. This is where books fail to help us. Books are helpful for people who need concept strength and are not very clear with the GRE syllabus. But once you are done with that, you need to take a lot of free GRE practice tests - GRE math practice test and GRE verbal practice tests. An online GRE Study Guide gives us the updated GRE math syllabus, updated questions and a lot to prepare for. If you wish to balance you preparation along with our co-curricular, books cannot help with it. Also, if there is a change in syllabus, it is difficult for books to inculcate it at the same time. Thus books become old with time and their value won’t hold the same importance as it does for new editions. A person should choose a method of study based on his/her own choices.