327: Thanks Gregmat!
TL:DR Just buy a GreGMAT subscription, overwhelmed plan is amazing.
Hey, just finished the GRE, got a 166V:161Q. Super happy about this - when I started studying, I was looking for at least a 310. Not sure what I got on the writing, but felt pretty confident about it.
Background: Avid reader, hobbyist writer (though the things I write have nothing to do with the GRE essays), Microbiology major. It had been years since I did math topics concerning the GRE and I also haven't taken any math classes in college (though general chemistry had lots of conversions)
Practice tests:
Kaplan - Slightly north of 310
PP2: 162/159
GregMat 1: 155/160 (note: this was before the overwhelmed plan but after studying ETS stuff)
Post Studying:
GregMat 2: 162/161
PP1 - 326 (using GregMATS PP1 grader)
What I did: My studying methods were pretty haphazard because my goals were relatively modest (that is, I could've gotten a 300 on the GRE and that would've been enough to not retake). I did the ETS math review and looked at some of the Quant and Verbal guides (which you can find the older versions of for free on the internet as PDFS), but honestly most of my learning came from GregMATS "I'm Overwhelmed" plan. It also helps that Greg is pretty funny and it reflects in the videos + descriptions.
I also did not review the mountains every day, but instead used Anki versions of the Quant and Verbal mountain (which you can find online), because it worked better for me. I also did some of the practice questions on GreGMAT, but I was pretty haphazard with that as well. I did not review Quant strategy before the test, which probably would've helped.
My favorite strategies:
AWA: I would just follow GreGMAT's advice (5 paragraph essay where you either mostly agree/mostly disagree with a concession), felt like it saved a lot of time. Definitely don't forget that you can use negative examples - that is, when you're having trouble providing an example that supports your opinion, you can alternatively provide an example attacking the opposite viewpoint.
Ex: Suppose that the prompt is that mint chocolate chip ice cream is better than vanilla (which is, in fact, true), and you mostly agree with this. Further suppose that one of your reasons for why mint chip is better is because the mintiness provides freshness - instead of providing examples of how other minty foods are refreshing, a negative example could be to attack a food that isn't minty.
"Peppermints are also minty foods that are renowned for their freshness. In contrast, tootsie rolls, a food that completely lacks mintiness, have been proven by scientists to be one of the least refreshing foods in the known universe."
A bit of a rough example, but you get the point.
Quant: There were a lot of questions where I had no immediate ideas on how to solve the problem, so I skipped them. Probability, combinatorics, and series are pretty rare. I would say that doing good here relies on a good foundation and being able to come up with some sort of plan to tackle the question (could be seeking a pattern, testing numbers, etc.) Speaking of testing numbers, for the Quantity A vs. Quantity B questions, I like to sub in numbers like 1 and zero, along with decimals and super large numbers, because they tend to reveal potential edge cases that make the answer D.
Verbal: In general, try to come up with an answer before looking at the answer choices. I also really liked contrast strategy - for example, in the phrase "People might think Pizza is ____, but reality would state that it is really __" tells you that the two blanks are probably opposites. In general, looking for relationships between the blanks is a good move. Looking for synonyms on pair questions is also a good idea (because if you have a pair question and one of the words has no matching synonyms, it cannot be the answer). I also really liked the "Word of Zeus" strategy where if the question asks you what the passage is saying, that you only choose an answer that is 100% said in the passage. So if you look at an answer and think "Well, maybe," or "I mean, that's plausibly true," I probably would not choose it.
Hope this helps!