Unpopular opinion from a 340 scorer
I was fortunate enough to score 170Q 170V on the GRE after ~4 months of studying. My prep plan was influenced by a lot of the popular advice on this sub, but I’ve come out of this experience with a pretty different view on the best preparation strategy.
My advice for people gunning for a perfect score: Plan to dedicate the majority of your time (~60%) to vocab. That's right. Not study sessions with Gregmat, not hard quant questions, but plain old vocab flashcards.
For some context: I have a pretty balanced background in both math and English. Even though I studied applied math and computer science in college, I’ve always been better at reading/writing than with math. My first practice test was a 163V, 163Q.
To prepare for test day, I memorized a list of 2000 vocab words. It took many many months to consolidate these words to my long term-memory, way longer than it took for me to go through the practice tests or practice the writing section. It legit felt insane to go in on test day and recognize almost every word in the verbal section.
This advice obviously doesn't apply to everyone, but I think vocab gets way under-emphasized in most prep advice. It’s significantly more time-consuming to learn vocab than to study for other components of the exam, but it pays off just as much.
Personally, Vince’s vocab flashcards were a huge help. His mnemonics might feel a bit dated (sorry, Vince!), but they made a big difference in making words stick. I also went through Gregmat’s vocab list and combined both into a giant Excel sheet, which allowed me to easily flag words I needed to review. I made sure to learn new words by associating them with salient images with several example sentences to help cement them in my mind. When I saw a new word, I’d look up multiple definitions and read them out loud to help reinforce it.
Obviously many people do not have time for this. At the end of the day, whether you score a 332 or a 340, it doesn’t really matter much for grad school applications. But I just wanted to share my experience in case it helps someone out there. Good luck to everyone prepping, and feel free to AMA.