My GRE journey from a 323 to a 330!
This is a long-pending post, so please bear with me.
My GRE journey started in October 2025 after I decided to switch from the GMAT (I’d scored a 615 in my GMAT attempt in June, and kept procrastinating a retake). For context, I come from an engineering background, with work experience across consulting and VC.
I subscribed to GregMat’s one-month plan and took my first GRE on November 28, 2025, scoring 323 (158V, 165Q). I’d done around 800 of the words from GregMat, and a PowerPrep+. I had 7 mistakes in Verbal, with 4 in SE, so figured my words were the issue.
I wasn’t disappointed with the score itself for the prep I had put in, but I knew it wasn’t where I wanted to be. I had always expected quant to carry me a little more, and I knew I had left points on the table.
For my second attempt which I started preparing for properly at some time in March 2026, I decided to slow down and actually build my fundamentals properly. I subscribed to the I’m Overwhelmed plan, went through the material, did all my words (thank the lord for my excel skills to cull out words that I had to practice), completed all of Greg’s questions, took all the GregMat mocks, and also did two PowerPrep+ (1 and 3) tests. My mock scores consistently sat around 330-335, so I felt I was finally where I needed to be.
I took my second attempt on May 31, 2026. 324 (159V, 165Q). That one really hurt.
A one-point improvement in verbal and no movement in quant after months of preparation was honestly devastating. The worst part was that my practice scores simply weren’t matching what was happening on test day. This time, I had 10 wrong in Verbal, with 6 in RC and 2 in SE.
I chose to work the 21 days before what would be my final attempt before application season, and decided to stop chasing more questions and instead focus on execution.
I went back through GregMat and revised my fundamentals again. I wrote down every methodology, every recurring mistake, and every technique Greg teaches.
For quant, I realised that most of my mistakes weren’t conceptual, they were in Quantitative Comparison. I simply wasn’t testing enough cases before deciding between A, B, C or D, and that was costing me 2–3 questions every exam.
For Verbal, I wasn’t applying the RC strategies, and was trying wing it for lack of a better word, so I went back to the official prep books, and Gregs videos, to catch what I was doing wrong and fix it.
I also started using Vince’s flashcard app whenever I had free time during the day, in the cab to work, while eating dinner alone, any free time tbh, which helped keep vocab fresh without feeling like another study session.
A day before the exam, I took another PowerPrep and scored a 334, which finally gave me some confidence.
Fast forward to June 28, 2026.
I reached the test centre in Delhi in nearly 40°C heat, which wasn’t exactly the ideal start to the day.
My sections were AWA – Verbal – Quant – Quant – Verbal.
The moment I started my second verbal section, I knew I’d gotten the harder module. Some of those questions were rough, especially the three-blank text completions. I just kept reminding myself to trust the process and go one question at a time.
I made one change that helped me a lot with quant. Across my mocks and past two attempts, I usually finished with around five minutes left, so instead of ending early, I re-read every single question to make sure I hadn’t missed any information or made a careless assumption. That alone probably saved me a couple of questions.
When I clicked Report Scores, I genuinely thought I had a shot at 330+ because it felt like one of my better attempts.
The screen came up, with a 330 (162V, 168Q). It was so unbelievable that I kept doubting the score till today, when I received my official report (with a 4.5 AWA)
That was the exact score I’d been chasing throughout this entire journey. Not a point higher, not a point lower.
Looking back, the biggest lesson for me was that doing more questions wasn’t what moved the needle. Understanding why I was making mistakes, slowing down, and trusting the methods I’d spent months learning made all the difference.
A huge shout-out to Greg, Vince, Scott, and honestly this entire subreddit. Reading discussions here over the last eight months taught me almost as much as studying itself.
Good luck to everyone still preparing. Happy to answer any questions if my experience can help someone else.