GRE 319 → 335 in One Month: How I Used Gemini for My GRE Prep
First, let me provide some background.
In June this year, I took the LSAT at home, but my score has been held and hasn't been released yet. Sad. Later, I realized that waiting idly was not a solution, and I was also considering applying for some non-legal programs, so I decided to take advantage of this break to prepare for the GRE, giving myself a month to study.
I actually signed up for a class at the beginning. I won’t mention the name of the institution, but the teacher was quite nice. When the class started, there were about 5 people in total. Two dropped out in the first week, and after a few weeks, one transferred to another class. So most of the time, it was more like one-on-two. In the last few sessions, because the other student couldn’t make it due to some issues, it even turned into one-on-one. The service experience was indeed very good, but to be honest, I didn't end up using many of the methods taught in the class. The main reason wasn't the teacher's fault, but rather that my attention was entirely focused on the TOEFL at the time. I scored a terrible 99 on my first TOEFL, and I spent the entire day thinking about how to raise it to 100, so I barely paid attention in the GRE class.
During the course, I took the GRE without any preparation and scored 319. At that moment, it really felt like my world had fallen: TOEFL 99, GRE 319, both exams just one point short of reaching the next level. After the TOEFL scores came out, the GRE course was also nearing its end. The reading teacher recommended an online practice platform to me, and I found it very suitable for me. In the end, I mainly relied on this platform + Gemini to go from 319 to 335. The most significant improvement was in Verbal, which increased from 152 to 167, nearly reaching the full score.
Let me clarify upfront: what follows is just my own learning approach, which may not necessarily suit everyone. I tend to be on the more extreme side—I don’t particularly enjoy summarizing techniques, but rather prefer to thoroughly grasp concepts through extensive input, practice, and review. So if you prefer systematic courses, skill summaries, and a step-by-step approach to problem-solving, this method may not be suitable for you.
1. My core approach is actually quite simple: practice, a lot.
During class, the teacher taught many techniques, including logic and problem-solving methods. In the end, I hardly used it at all. My method, to put it simply, is: Understand the question, then solve it.
There are no particularly magical techniques; it's all about extensive practice to develop a strong sense of language, problem-solving intuition, and reading ability. When I was preparing for the exam, I just worked through the practice questions on the platform. One nice side effect was that by test day, I was already so familiar with the test interface that the actual GRE almost felt like just another practice session at home. Over the course of a month, I completed more than 1,000 Verbal questions, including fill-in-the-blank and reading comprehension.
Here, I would like to emphasize one point in particular: Do not translate the questions. (I am not a native English speaker.)
If your goal is a Verbal score of 160+, I personally believe that relying on translation is essentially meaningless. The GRE test time is very tight. During the actual exam, you simply don't have time to first translate the English into another language, then analyze it, and finally choose the answer.
So my entire training process involves reading English directly, understanding it directly, and doing it directly. Of course, it will be very painful at first, and you might even feel like you're guessing on many questions in a row. But when I had done about 500 questions, I began to notice that many things started to feel familiar. It's only after persisting through about 1000 questions that one truly gets into the groove. So for me, the later stages of the GRE Verbal section are not about "how many more techniques I know," but rather whether my mind can immediately react when I see a sentence, a logical relationship, or an option.
2. For every question I don't understand, I will keep going until I truly understand it.
This is one of the most important points.
Every time I encounter a problem I don't understand, I directly hand it over to Gemini and let it explain it to me step by step.
But here's the key point: Don't just ask "Why is the answer A?" What you really need to address is: Why didn't I understand this question?
Based on my own experience, when I couldn't solve problems in the early stages, it was mostly not because GRE logic was too abstract, but due to two very basic issues: I don't recognize the word. I didn't understand the sentence.
For the first 500 questions, the main issues I encountered were vocabulary and grammar. If after doing 500 questions, you still often can't understand the questions at all because you don't know the words, I think you should still focus on improving your vocabulary first.
Moving forward, the issue will gradually become: "I know every word, but I don't understand what this passage is saying." At such times, what is often lacking is not vocabulary or grammar, but background knowledge.
3. My major takeaway: To study for the GRE, you actually need to learn a lot of background knowledge.
This is the point I would like to share most from my entire method.
The GRE reading section covers a wide range of topics: astronomy, geography, history, geology, biology, literary criticism, literary history, feminism, labor movements, African American history, indigenous issues, and more.
As I went on, I increasingly felt that: If you have no idea what an article is talking about, reading it can be really painful. So later on, whenever I worked on a problem and realized I didn't understand the background behind it, I would continue to ask Gemini.
For example, if an article mentions a certain literary school, I won't just ask: "Why did you choose B for this question?" I will continue to ask: "What exactly is this literary school?" "Why did it appear?" "What is the difference between it and another school of thought?" "What is the historical background of this?" Sometimes they even ask philosophical questions all the way through. Feminism, labor movements, Black history, and Indigenous issues are particularly common in GRE reading passages. I even jokingly refer to them as the "GRE Reading BIG FOUR."
At first, I would feel: "Why should I learn all these things just for a GRE?" But the actual effect is very significant. When you already know what a topic is generally about, you don't start decoding it from scratch when you encounter similar articles; instead, you understand it within the framework of your existing knowledge. The article suddenly becomes very easy to read. I managed to achieve a level of satisfaction with this task within a month.
If you learn more slowly, I think two months would be more than enough. Moreover, I tend to forget some background knowledge as I progress, so when I encounter similar questions, I ask the AI to explain them again. After repeating it several times, you will naturally remember it.
4. Should I memorize vocabulary, study grammar, learn background knowledge, or do more practice questions?
My answer to this question is: it depends on which stage you're stuck at now. If your basic vocabulary is still insufficient, you should certainly start by memorizing words.
When I started this method, my vocabulary was probably at least around 8,000 words. If your vocabulary is significantly below this level, directly tackling GRE reading passages in this way would be extremely painful. If you encounter a word you don't know, I think you can look it up anytime. The same goes for grammar. If a sentence is already so complex that you can't break it down at all, then of course you need to improve your grammar.
However, if your grammar foundation is roughly at the TOEFL 90+ level, I personally don't think it's necessary to spend a lot of time systematically studying grammar. For me, after mastering basic vocabulary and grammar, the marginal benefit of background knowledge is very high.
When you lack background knowledge, you're not just "getting the question wrong"; you don't even know what the question is about. Forcing a hard reset in this state can easily lead to increasing frustration. On the contrary, once you truly understand what the article is about, you can gradually increase the number of practice questions, and solving them will become smoother and smoother.
So I'm not saying "don't do practice problems." After all, I ended up doing a lot of practice problems. My theory is: First, resolve the reasons why you don't understand the material, and then practice a large number of problems. This approach is far more effective than simply mindlessly increasing the volume of practice.
5. My study intensity is very high, and this must be mentioned.
I have basically been preparing for the exam full-time this month.
Every day, besides eating, I sleep about 10 hours and exercise for 2 hours. The rest of the time is mostly spent on GRE preparation. The actual effective time for practicing questions is about 8 hours a day. Every 55 minutes or so, I go out for a 5-minute walk and then come back to continue.
So don't assume that "from 152 to 167 in a month" is an easy path. No. I really spent a lot of time on it.
If I can only study for one or two hours each day, I think it would be much more reasonable to extend the cycle to two months or even longer.
There's also a very boring but useful little trick for me: If the goal for the day is 200 questions, I sometimes intentionally stop at 199 and then start a new section. This will result in a: "They're already open, let's make a few more dishes." Finally, it might reach 210 or 220 in a day. It's childish, but it works for me.
Additionally, I will always have a Word document or Apple Notes open. For every question I tackle, if any word causes even the slightest confusion—whether it's unfamiliar, its meaning is uncertain, or I've misunderstood it in context—I immediately copy it down. Only copy the words, no translations, no definitions, and no fancy notes. Everyday if I still have energy, I quickly review these words. The key is not to re-learn the vocabulary. Instead, when you see this word, try to recall: "Where did I see it just now in which question?" If you can recall the exact words, the article, or even the context at that time, I think it would be much more effective than memorizing a definition.
6. My studying rhythm is 6+1.
That is: 6 days for new questions, 1 day for specifically reviewing mistakes.
The platform has a dedicated feature for incorrect questions, so I will compile the wrong answers into a section and redo them.
I usually start by selecting the last 50 incorrect questions. The reason is simple: the more recent the mistakes are, the farther back they are, and the less firmly they are remembered. Moreover, the number of incorrect answers is dynamically changing. For example, if you make the same mistake again when redoing a problem, that problem will be added back to your collection of mistakes. So to avoid getting confused, I will remember which problems I solved in each round. If it feels too troublesome, you can also create a separate "mistake log" to record the last few questions each time. Next time you review, continue from there and move forward.
I was quite lucky, and my accuracy rate eventually allowed me to form a comfortable 7-day cycle: The mistakes made in the first 6 days can basically be redone in full on the 7th day. If you have a lot of mistakes, you can definitely take an extra half day or even a full day to review, without strictly adhering to this schedule.
7. After completing the first round of practice, I went through all the incorrect questions again.
This stage left a deep impression on me. When I first did these problems, my overall accuracy was only about 65%. It's quite low. However, after I finish a round of practice problems and then go back to redo my mistakes, more than 95% of the incorrect answers can be corrected.
This indicates, at least for me: After one round of extensive practice and another round of reviewing mistakes, most of the questions are actually truly mastered. When I went back to redo the second round, it was almost completely correct.
At this stage, I can even remember the answers to many of the questions. But I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing. If you see a question and not only remember that "the answer is C," but also recall the logic of the passage, the context, and why the other options are incorrect, then you are actually already memorizing the question. The GRE itself contains a large number of repetitive language structures and thought patterns.
8. Why don't I recommend starting by memorizing GRE vocabulary words frantically?
Because for me: The pain of not being able to memorize a single word the first time is far greater than encountering it in a question and then remembering it.
Moreover, after you have completed over 1,000 Verbal questions, according to the GRE word frequency distribution, you have a high probability of having encountered a large number of common words in the exam. At this point, if you specifically focus on memorizing those low-frequency words, the marginal benefit will significantly decrease.
Of course, this does not mean that "you don't need to memorize vocabulary for the GRE." I believe vocabulary is a prerequisite for this method.
For me, in the later stages, it was more effective to encounter words repeatedly in real test questions rather than continuing to memorize isolated word lists.
9. Before the exam, I basically only review the questions I got wrong.
At this stage, most of the vocabulary, question types, and logic have already been encountered many times. So I didn't go crazy adding new things. It's just about reviewing the mistakes and looking at the words I recorded before. You can also take a quick look at the issue question. I actually prepared very little for my own issue. If there are uncertainties before the issue question, I will continue to ask Gemini.
10. Regarding mock exams: I only do them in the final week.
I started doing a mock exam every morning about one week before the official test.
My mock test Verbal score averages around 160. The final official exam actually felt easier than some of the mock exams I had taken. Of course, this is very subjective, as everyone draws different questions and has varying test conditions, so don't rely too much on mock exam scores to predict your final results.
For me, the most important role of mock exams is not to predict scores, but to get used to the exam rhythm.
Finally, let's summarize.
My major takeaway is actually not about "what magical techniques there are for the GRE." Instead: Understanding English thoroughly is far more important than memorizing a bunch of test-taking tricks.
In the early stage, focus on building vocabulary and grammar. When you encounter an article that you don't understand, make sure to grasp the knowledge behind it. Then do a lot of practice problems. If you make a mistake, review it and try again. When you do enough, many things will gradually shift from "needing analysis" to "being obvious at a glance."
This is probably the entire process of how I improved from Verbal 152 to 167.
However, it is important to emphasize again: the intensity of my study over this month has been very high, and I already had a certain level of vocabulary and English foundation before I started preparing for the exam, so do not mechanically replicate the timeline of "one month." Finding a rhythm that suits you is more important.
I hope this post can be helpful to anyone currently preparing for the GRE.
And I hope everyone gets the score they’re aiming for.
