u/mn2931

I recently retook the GRE and scored a 162V, 169Q. I'm retaking in early November because I am applying to top 10 CS, Statistics, Applied Math, and ORFE programs, which are extremely selective, and I need all the advantages I can get, especially because I lack publications. Here's what I did before the July test:

• I used Manhattan for verbal practice, as well as the Kaplan verbal workbook and prep book practice tests
• For extra reading practice, I did Big Book and Magoosh passages
• I completed most of the ETS verbal practice in the Official Guide and Verbal workbook
• To track my mistakes, I made an error log, but I don't think I took it seriously enough to learn from my mistakes
• I did 15+ practice tests from ETS, Kaplan, and PR

However, this only yielded a 1 pt gain from my 162V,168Q result in 2024 which I used for MS applications. Here’s my current plan. This time, I am "studying smarter, not harder." I plan to limit my 3rd party practice tests to 1 and will instead focus my plan on the 3 PowerPrep Tests which I did not purchase last go around. I am concurrently prepping for the GRE Math Subject Test in late October, so for now I am doing 3 hours a day. The schedule runs 10AM-2PM with a lunch hour:

Day	Section	Time	Blocks
Monday	Verbal	10:00AM-11:00AM	Big Book long passages
		11:00AM–12:00PM	GregMat One-Month Study Plan (Version 2.0)
		1:00PM-2:00PM	Vocabulary: vocab mountain, magoosh, quizlet
Tuesday	Verbal	10:00AM-11:00AM	2, 3-blank TC: gregmat bank, Kaplan, Magoosh, Manhattan
		11:00AM–12:00PM	SE, GregMat 1 mo V
		1:00PM-2:00PM	Vocab, 2-3 blank TC
Wednesday	Verbal	10:00AM-11:00AM	ETS RC: redoing a set of used questions
		11:00AM–12:00PM	ETS RC: looking at last week’s set and taking thorough notes on misses
		1:00PM-2:00PM	Vocab, SE or TC depending on weakness
Thursday	Verbal	10:00AM-11:00AM	Timed section + review
		11:00AM–12:00PM	GregMat 1mo V
		1:00PM-2:00PM	Vocab test, error log
Friday	Quant	10:00AM-11:00AM	Timed section + review the sec
		11:00AM–12:00PM	Review
		1:00PM-2:00PM	Drills based on section
Sunday	Quant	2 hrs anytime	Drills
			Drills + retrospective

This is based on me missing 4 RC (mostly long passage), 2 multi blank TC and 1 SE

1 week before the PowerPrep test, I plan to do an extra hour per day with an extra verbal set and review time. Let me know any suggestions or tips!

I recently retook the GRE and scored a 162V, 169Q. I'm retaking in early November because I am applying to top 10 CS, Statistics, Applied Math, and ORFE programs, which are extremely selective, and I need all the advantages I can get, especially because I lack publications. Here's what I did before the July test:

• I used Manhattan for verbal practice, as well as the Kaplan verbal workbook and prep book practice tests
• For extra reading practice, I did Big Book and Magoosh passages
• I completed most of the ETS verbal practice in the Official Guide and Verbal workbook
• To track my mistakes, I made an error log, but I don't think I took it seriously enough to learn from my mistakes
• I did 15+ practice tests from ETS, Kaplan, and PR

However, this only yielded a 1 pt gain from my 162V,168Q result in 2024 which I used for MS applications. Here’s my current plan. This time, I am "studying smarter, not harder." I plan to limit my 3rd party practice tests to 1 and will instead focus my plan on the 3 PowerPrep Tests which I did not purchase last go around. I am concurrently prepping for the GRE Math Subject Test in late October, so for now I am doing 3 hours a day. The schedule runs 10AM-2PM with a lunch hour:

Day	Section	Time	Blocks
Monday	Verbal	10:00AM-11:00AM	Big Book long passages
		11:00AM–12:00PM	GregMat One-Month Study Plan (Version 2.0)
		1:00PM-2:00PM	Vocabulary: vocab mountain, magoosh, quizlet
Tuesday	Verbal	10:00AM-11:00AM	2, 3-blank TC: gregmat bank, Kaplan, Magoosh, Manhattan
		11:00AM–12:00PM	SE, GregMat 1 mo V
		1:00PM-2:00PM	Vocab, 2-3 blank TC
Wednesday	Verbal	10:00AM-11:00AM	ETS RC: redoing a set of used questions
		11:00AM–12:00PM	ETS RC: looking at last week’s set and taking thorough notes on misses
		1:00PM-2:00PM	Vocab, SE or TC depending on weakness
Thursday	Verbal	10:00AM-11:00AM	Timed section + review
		11:00AM–12:00PM	GregMat 1mo V
		1:00PM-2:00PM	Vocab test, error log
Friday	Quant	10:00AM-11:00AM	Timed section + review the sec
		11:00AM–12:00PM	Review
		1:00PM-2:00PM	Drills based on section
Sunday	Quant	2 hrs anytime	Drills
			Drills + retrospective

This is based on me missing 4 RC (mostly long passage), 2 multi blank TC and 1 SE

1 week before the PowerPrep test, I plan to do an extra hour per day with an extra verbal set and review time. Let me know any suggestions or tips!

I just took the GRE general and scored (unofficially) 162V,169Q. I prepared a lot for the verbal section but failed to improve my score. My preparation included vocab flash cards, Manhattan 5lb book, ETS verbal guide and official guide + free PowerPrep tests, and GregMat. I kept an error log and made a document summarizing all the verbal mistakes. I mostly struggle with vocab on Sentence Equivalence, multiple answer RC, and argument based RC. I’m aiming for top CS/Stats/applied math PhDs. Any advice to boost my score by late September would be greatly appreciated!

I had a recruiter screen today at a FAANG for an ML role.

The interview went really bad. I'm honestly in shock and quite upset. The fellow seemed rather curt, but he said I'll introduce the role, let you introduce yourself, discuss, etc, then let you ask questions. I gave my standard about me spiel overviewing my degree (T10 Uni CS + Math), my journey from research to school clubs to FAANG internship and my project experience in ML.

He then asked me to present in more depth one of my projects (I chose a code generation system I'm working on). I described what I did (from the Markov Decision Process framework to the reinforcement learning to the LoRA finetuning and implementation details). Then he asked me "how did you find the pass rate" upon which I elaborated that I ran code in sandbox, then he said something like "I don't see how you even did that" upon which I finished giving him the metrics.

Then he said "How?" Just how, nothing else,. and when I pressed for follow up he said "How did you do that? How did LoRA and RL interact". Then I answered using technical details of both and saying that they worked together to improve pass rate, but before I could finish he interrupted me and said "I'm going to stop you there, thank you for your time, bye."

WTAF. What is going on? Why am I so unsuccessful? I sent a follow up email saying this behavior was unprofessional and asking for feedback but that's not gonna do anything.

FML