Aside from familiarizing yourself with practice problems, it is critical that you apply study strategies that emphasize repetition of some kind. Our brains are designed to learn by repetition. There is no way around that fact. On some occasions, you may come across a concept or piece of knowledge that you can assimilate in a single attempt. However, in most cases, you will need to hammer that information into your brain repeatedly until it sticks or until you really understand it. Also, take care to apply repetitious study strategies only to concepts and knowledge most relevant to the GRE. Again, this is where your practice problems can be useful, as they give you clues about what kinds of concepts you should be rehearsing.

If you are not sure about how do repetitious studying, try to come at a particular concept from as many angles as possible. For example, if it is a mathematical problem solving concept, then answer a variety of practice problems that involve that concept in some way. This is a more effective strategy than simply answering the same question over and over again. By using a variety of approaches to the one concept, your brain will construct a richer, more abstract and more complete internal representation of the concept in question. As a consequence, you will be able to find solutions to novel problems involving this concept much faster than students who do not undertake such varied practice.

There are other strategies for increasing the speed with which you can answer the questions in the GRE. One GRE prep strategy that is very effective, but not widely used, is the strategy of meditation. It is well known that students who meditate regularly prior to an exam, and particularly on the day of the exam, perform much better than those who do not. Meditation works by reducing the mental and emotional noise that interferes with your thinking processes. Meditation is quite simple. All you need to do is find a quiet place to sit down. Close your eyes, then focus your attention on your breath. Every time your attention wanders, return it to your breath. Doing this for as little as 20 minutes per day can have a phenomenal impact on your speed and accuracy during the test.

GRE prep strategies that speed up your problem solving are important simply because each section of the test has a time constraint. To further improve your ability to answer as many questions as you can in the time allotted, you should come up with a rough plan about how to proceed before you actually start answering any questions. Spend a couple of minutes scanning the current section of the test. While you are scanning, make brief notes about which questions you can do efficiently and which may cost you too much time. While this method costs you a few minutes initially, it does prevent you from wasting time on questions and concepts with which you have low familiarity.

The verbal section of the GRE involves questions that demand that you have a strong vocabulary. Many of the questions in this section will ask you to choose the word that is most similar in meaning to a given word. Others will ask you to choose an antonym: the word that is most different in meaning. To get the best result for this section of the test, you need to spend ample study time improving your vocabulary.

Finally, the analytical writing section of the test can easily make it or break it for you. In this case, a little bit of practice and preparation can go a long way. Your submissions for the writing section of the GRE are graded primarily on their coherence and structure. This means that, before you get started, you should have a solid outline from which you write an articulate argument. You can practice and prepare sample outlines, as well as other other strategies discussed here, by using standard GRE preparation products.