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60 Day Advanced GRE Verbal Study Plan

This 60-day advanced and expert GRE verbal study plan demands 2 to 2.5 hours each day and must be followed to the pen to make progress.

This 60-day advanced verbal study plan has been designed for non-native GRE test takers (especially those in Pakistan). After 4-5 years of teaching GRE to students in Pakistan, I have designed this eclectic plan, which has been culled from various authentic and effective resources. This plan assumes that either you are have a good level of English vocabulary and reading ability or that you have already gone through my 30-day basic GRE verbal study plan.

If you are able to manage 1.5 to 2 hours a day, on average, you will be able to finish this plan and be fully prepared to take the GRE exam after 2 months of starting this plan. Please make sure that you follow it strictly and do not skip or skim through any portions – this plan has been tested by me over many of my own students and it has produced results ranging between 155 and 167 on the verbal section. I would also caution you against using any other material except for what has been referred to in this study plan – this material is concise and most effective when it comes to building an advanced level of prep for the course. Moreover I would advice against combining more than one day and covering that stuff in a single sitting. Up to 2 hours a day of consistent studying for the GRE is more than sufficient.

Study Material You Need

  • Guide 1
  • Guide 2
  • Guide 3
  • Guide 4
  • Guide 5
  • Guide 6
  • Guide 7
  • Guide 8
  • Guide 9
  • Guide 10
  • Guide 11
  • Guide 12
  • Guide 13
  • Guide 14

Day 1

Vocabulary: Start with learning vocabulary and spend around 30 minutes learning 15 new words at random from the guide 1.
Reading Comprehension: In the next 20 minutes read the 4 main components of a GRE passage from page 49 to 52 of guide 2. Spend another 15 minutes and do the drill passage and questions on page 53. Then check your answers on page 55 and 56.
Text Completions: Spend 30 minutes to quickly skim through and solve example questions from pages 27 to 32 of guide 3. In 10 minutes do the drill exercise on page 33, which has 10 questions. Verify your answers and solutions on page 34.
Sentence Equivalence: Quickly skim through and solve example questions from pages 73 to 75 of guide 3 in 10 minutes. Next, do a timed drill exercise on page 76, which has 5 questions – don’t spend more than a minute of each question. Finally verify your answers and solutions on page 77.

Tips for RC: When attempting to answer GRE reading comprehension questions, always try and re-phrase the question in your own words. Many times when you read a question without totally understanding, you simply go back to the passage scanning for an answer, hoping to look for words in the passage that are relevant. The GRE test makers know that students do this, and they make sure that the incorrect choices include those words from the passage. Therefore you must rephrase the question to navigate through the passage searching for the answer.

Day 2

Vocabulary: Spend the next 30 minutes learning 20 new words at random from the guide 1.
Reading Comprehension: In 30 minutes read the tips and tricks on how to handle short GRE passage given on 59 to 63 of guide 2. Spend another 20 minutes on problem sets on page 65 to 66 and check your answers on page 67 and 68.
Text Completions: For 30 minutes read through and solve example questions from pages 35 to 41 of guide 3. In another 10 minutes do the drill exercise on page 42, which has 10 questions. Again make sure that you verify your answers and solutions on page 43 and 44.
Sentence Equivalence: Spend 15 minutes to quickly skim through and solve example questions from pages 78 to 81 of guide 3. Expend another 10 minutes doing the drill exercise on page 82. Check your answers and solutions on page 83.

Tips for RC: Don’t jump in. First read the entire sentence or paragraph to get the overall picture, and break down the paragraph in your own words. Then put your own word in the blank that you deem fit. Make sure you justify your word for the blank using clues from the rest of the sentence.

Day 3

Vocabulary: Spend the next 30 minutes learning 20 new words at random from guide 1.
Reading Comprehension: Put in no more than 30 minutes to read and solve the example passages on how to handle long GRE passage, on page 71 to 75 of guide 2. Read about the structure of long passages in detail and then invest 25 minutes on problem sets on page 77 and 78 and check your answers on page 79 and 80.
Text Completions: Consume 10 minutes to skim through and solve example questions from page 44 to 46 of guide 3. Next spend another 20 minutes doing the easy drill exercise on page 47 to 51, which has 20 questions. Check your answers and solutions on page 63 and 64.
Sentence Equivalence: Spend 10 minutes to on page 84 to 86 of guide 3. Next run through the 20-question easy drill exercise on page 87 to in 10 minutes. Affirm your answers and solutions on page 103 and 105.

Tips for RC:
Break down of reading comprehensions:

  • 1 Long passage (500+ words) having 4 questions
  • 5 to 6 small passages (100-150 words) with 1 to 2 questions each
  • 2-3 Medium passages (150-250 words) with 2 to 3 questions each
  • 3-4 Critical Reasoning questions (100 to 150 words) with one question each

Day 4

Vocabulary: Spend the next 45 minutes learning 25 new words at random from the guide 1.
Reading Comprehension: In 30 minutes read about the question types and the seven solving strategies on page 83 to 86 of guide 2.
Reading Comprehension: In less than 60 minutes read about the question type analysis along with differences between question formats on page 89 to 104. Then apply this to the actual questions in guide 2 on these pages.

Tips for RC: When you read a question on the GRE passages, do not simply jump back to the passage or the options. Instead anticipate the answer first then go to the passage. Once you find the answer, rephrase it and go and check the options. If none of the answers match with your answer then return to the passage to make sure you have not misinterpreted something.

Day 5

Reading Comprehension: Confer 45 minutes to do passages and problem sets from page 107 to 114. Check answers on page 123 to 136 of guide 2.
Text Completions: In 25 minutes do the medium drill exercise on page 52 to 56, which has 20 questions of guide 3. Verify your answers and solutions on page 65 and 67.
Sentence Equivalence: For 25 minutes doing the medium drill exercise on page 91 to 95, which has 20 questions of guide 3. Corroborate your options on page 106 and 108.

Tips: GRE test makers work hard to make the answers choices subtly worded in order to trap the students. Therefore I always advise you to first read the question, do not rush to the choices – instead think of an answer, go back to the passage if required to verify it and then look at the options.

Day 6

Text Completions: For 30 minutes do the hard drill exercise on page 57 to 61, which has 20 questions of guide 3. Match your answers and solutions on page 68 and 70.
Sentence Equivalence: In 30 minutes do the hard drill exercise on page 96 to 101, which has 20 questions of guide 3. For correct solutions go to page 109 till 111.
Reading Comprehension: Do the passages and problem sets from page 115 to 122 in another 20 minutes. Check answers on page 136 to 158 of guide 2.

Tips for RC: There is only one long passage on the GRE test, which is usually more than 500 words long. With every long passage you will get to see four questions. I would advise you to leave the long passage for the end since it is not only time consuming but it also mentally drains you.

Day 7: Take OFF

Day 8

Vocabulary: Spend the next 15 minutes learning 10 new words at random from the guide 1.
Text Completions & Sentence Equivalence: In another 15 minutes finish reading and practicing example questions from page 18 to 20 of guide 4.
Diagnostic: Expend 75 minutes to take the verbal diagnostic test of guide 4 from page 51 to 71.

Tips for Text Completions: Your biggest enemy on text-completions is the answer choices. If you start plug and play with every question you will get nowhere. This is the biggest trap that the test makers lay to lead you to the wrong answers. Hence always look for a clue and then come up with your own word(s) for the blanks before looking at the options.

Day 9

Vocabulary: In 60 minutes learn 50 new words at random from guide 1.
Text Completions: For 35 minutes, practice questions from drill 1 and 2 on page 49 to 54 of guide 5. Check your answers and detailed solutions on page 77 till 80.
Sentence Equivalence: For 30 minutes practice questions in drill 1 on page 165 to 170 of guide 5. Confirm your answers and detailed solutions on page 214 till 216.

Tips for RC: Always try to do the short passages first – since they are smaller, therefore lesser the chances of getting confused. However some of the short passages can be very dense and have harder questions – if you don’t comprehend the passage after reading it a few times, move on.

Day 10

Text Completions: Spend the next 45 minutes doing questions from drill 3, 4 and 5 on page 55 to 63 of guide 5. Check your answers and detailed solutions on page 81 till 86.
Reading Comprehension: In no more than 60 minutes read and practice questions from page 8 to 15 of guide 6.
Text Completions: For 25 minutes practice questions from drill 6, 7 on page 64 to 69 of guide 5. Crosscheck your answers given on page 87 till 90.

Tips for Text Completions: Hard text completion questions can have difficult vocabulary, difficult sentence structure and subtle differences in answer choices. In such sentences you will never be able to find any clue – you will simply have to plug in some choices and see which set of words give a complete, coherent meaning. For example if you chose a word for the first blank but none of the other choices make sense for the other blanks then the first blank is wrong. In other words you will have to work backwards and plug and play with a few options before arriving at your final answer.

Day 11

Sentence Equivalence: For 25 minutes practice questions from drill 2 on page 171 to 176 of guide 5. Validate your answers and detailed solutions on page 217 till 219.
Vocabulary: In 15 minutes learn 10 new words at random from the guide 1. Make sure that you learn words at random – learning words in alphabetical order can become boring sometimes.
Reading Comprehension: Spend the next 90 minutes reading and practicing questions from page 16 to 27 of guide 6.

Tips for Sentence Equivalence: Sentence Equivalence instructions are a little confusing – ETS says you have to choose two options that best complete the sentence. So essentially the options may not be synonyms but must produce synonymous sentences.

Day 12

Sentence Equivalence: For 45 minutes keep practicing questions from drill 3 and 4 on page 177 to 188 of guide 5. Check your answers and detailed solutions on page 220 till 225.
Reading Comprehension: In another 90 minutes reading and practicing questions from page 28 to 39 of guide 6.

Tips for RC: What if you come across a difficult word on the passage? This is not a problem – I tell my students in class that if you come across a tough word on the passage don’t stop, keep reading and you will understand the gist of it without even knowing the word. In this study plan if you see, I have made reading mandatory rather than cramming words. This is because after loads of reading you will be able to get an idea of the passage even without knowing most of the words. Look for the clues in the sentence and ignore the word you don’t know of.

Day 13

Sentence Equivalence: Put in 35 minutes practicing questions from drill 5 and 6 on page 189 to 200 of guide 5. As always make sure to validate your answers and detailed solutions on page 226 till 231.
Reading Comprehension: Spend the next 30 minutes reading and practicing questions from page 40 to 45 of guide 6.
Sentence Equivalence: Spend the next 15 minutes practicing questions from drill 7 on page 201 to 206 of guide 5. Check your answers and detailed solutions on page 232 till 234.

Tips for Sentence Equivalence: What if two of the synonymous options work but another third option, which is not synonymous, but one that does give a synonymous sentence works? In such a case always pick the synonyms. Whenever you start with sentence equivalence always try to look for synonyms amongst the answer choices.

Day 14: Take OFF

Day 15

Reading Comprehension: Read and practice questions from page 46 to 51 of guide 6 in no more than 30 minutes.
Vocabulary: Spend the next 60 minutes consolidating all the vocabulary from the last 14 days
Reading Comprehension: In another 30 minutes read and practice questions from page 52 to 57 of guide 6.

Tips for S.E. and T.C. Poor scorers focus too much on learning words. In my experience, students who focus a lot on building vocabulary and lesser on reading end up getting pretty low GRE scores. Therefore while reading they do know the words but they don’t get the overall picture of the passage. Therefore you must not just focus on learning words – reading is vital.

Day 16

Reading Comprehension: Spend the next 120 minutes reading and practicing questions from page 58 to 73 of guide 6.

Day 17

Reading Comprehension: For 30 minutes read and practice questions from page 75 to 80 of guide 6.
Vocabulary: In the next 60 minutes learn 50 new words at random from guide 1.

Day 18

Text Completions: For 80 minutes answer the 50 questions given on page 48 to 58 of guide 8 – make sure to use only your own words for the blanks. Do not look at the options. The options given with the text completion questions are rarely seen on the exam. Therefore it will be a waste of an effort learning these words. Use these sentences to practice the structure. Answers are given from page 79 to 93.
Vocabulary: Spend the next 30 minutes learning 20 new words at random from guide 1.

Tips for Text Completions: For 2 or 3 blank questions, I would advise you to first fill in any blank that you find a clue for. Then using that blank come up with words for the remaining blanks. This is important because you won’t always be able to solve 2 or 3 blank questions starting from the first blank. Sometimes you will find other blanks are much easier to solve first. When you’ve finally chosen your two/three answers, and then re-read the whole sentence to see if it all makes sense.

Day 19

Sentence Equivalence: In 60 minutes do the 50 questions given on page 97 to 106 of guide 8. Again do not look at the options or learn these words. Guide 8 has vocabulary that does not come on the exam. Answers are given on page 123 to 135.
Reading Comprehension: Spend the next 45 minutes reading and practicing questions from page 81 to 92 of guide 6.

Tips for RC: Pacing on GRE passages is crucial. One common erroneous approach to solving GRE passages is that one should give equal amount of time to every GRE question. This is wrong! Sentence Equivalence and Text Completions take much less time and the passages take significantly more – therefore spend more time on the passages rather than equally dividing your time.

Day 20

Reading Comprehension: Spend the next 15 minutes reading and practicing questions from page 93 to 96 of guide 6.
Sentence Equivalence: In 60 minutes from page 106 to 117, do the 50 questions in guide 8 – do not look at the options. Find the answers from page 123 to 135.
Reading Comprehension: Spend the next 45 minutes reading and practicing questions from page 97 to 106 of guide 6.

Tips for S.E.: For sentence equivalence always read the sentence first and come up with your own word for the blank – in case you cannot then try to pick synonym pairs from the options.

Day 21: Take OFF

Day 22

Reading Comprehension: In 90 minutes read and practice questions from page 107 to 126 of guide 6.
Vocabulary: Spend the next 60 minutes learning 50 new words at random from guide 1.

Day 23

Vocabulary: For 60 minutes revise all the words you learned in the past 21 days
Sentence Equivalence: From guide spend 35 minutes on page 117 to 122 and do 28 questions from guide 8. As always don’t look at the options – answers are on page 123 to 135.

Day 24

Reading Comprehension: Spend the next 120 minutes reading and practicing questions from page 127 to 162 of guide 6.

Day 25

Reading Comprehension: For 30 minutes read and practice questions from page 163 to 169 of guide 6.
Vocabulary: Spend the next 60 minutes learning 60 new words at random from guide 1.

Day 26

Reading Comprehension: In 150 minutes read and practice questions from page 170 to 211 of guide 6.

Day 27

Text Completions: From guide 8, in 80 minutes do the 50 questions from page 58 to 69 – only use your own words and don’t select any options. All answers can be found from page 79 to 93.

Tips: It’s Not Always About the Vocabulary. I have seen students focusing too hard on preparing vocabulary for text completions and equivalence forgetting that these questions primarily test one’s ability to understand the context of a sentence. Many times the answer choices are not difficult words or phrases – nevertheless the structure is often hard. For two and three blanks the structure is extremely involved.

Day 28: Take OFF

Day 29

Vocabulary: In 60 minutes revise as much vocabulary as you can that you have done so far.

Day 30

Vocabulary: In 60 minutes revise all the vocabulary that you have done so far.

Day 31

Critical Reasoning: Read chapter 9 from page 161 to 179 in 120 minutes and understand all the techniques to solve reasoning passages in guide 2. Do not waste time on diagramming from page 163 to 166. I don’t think it is useful technique to solve these questions since one doesn’t have enough time to create a diagram.

Day 32

Reading Comprehension: In 60 minutes, read from page 364 to 377 of guide 7 and do all questions. Answers are available on page 419 till 495.
Critical Reasoning: Spend 60 minutes to solve questions from page 179 to 182 of guide 2. Check answers from 183 to 190.

Tips for critical reasoning: These short paragraph questions are always followed by one question and one must not spend more than a minute and a half doing them.

Day 33

Critical Reasoning: In less than 50 minutes, do the 25 questions from page 500 to 507 of guide 7. All answers are available on page 540 to 663.
Vocabulary: Spend the next 30 minutes learning 20 new words at random from guide 1.

Day 34

Reading Comprehension: For 60 minutes, do the questions from page 378 to 387 of guide 7. All answers are available from page 419 till 495.
Critical Reasoning: In another 50 minutes do the 25 questions from page 507 to 515 and check your answers from page 540 to 663 of guide 7.

Tips for RC: Making notes while reading is not a good way of tackling timed reading passages on the GRE. You must develop a habit of being an active reader where you quickly scan through the passage identifying and understanding important sections of the passage.

Day 35: Take OFF

Day 36

Vocabulary: Spend the next 60 minutes learning 40 new words at random from guide 1.

Day 37

Critical Reasoning: In 50 minutes solve 25 questions from page 515 to 522 and look for answers on page 540 till 663 of guide 7.

Day 38

Reading Comprehension: Do all questions given on page 388 to 397 in 60 minutes of guide 7. All answers are available at 419 till 495.

Tips for RC: Every question takes different time to answer. Inference, strengthening and weakening questions take more time than the main idea or vocabulary context questions. On the GRE if you find a question requiring you to go back to the passage and read in greater detail, it is better to move on to the easier questions first. Make sure that you don’t end up skipping too many questions.

Day 39

Critical Reasoning: For 50 minutes solve the 25 questions given on page 522 to 531 of guide 7. All answers are available on page 540 to 663.

Day 40

Reading Comprehension: In 60 minutes do all the questions from page 398 to 407. Make sure to check your answer on page 419 till 495 of guide 7.

Day 41

Critical Reasoning: Spend the next 50 minutes doing the 24 questions given on page 531 to 538 of guide 7. Answers available on page 540 to 663.
Vocabulary: Spend the next 60 minutes learning 40 new words at random from guide 1.

Day 42: Take OFF

Day 43

Text Completions: In 70 minutes from page 69 to 78, do the 41 questions from guide 8. Do not look at the options, as these words are irrelevant from the context of GRE. Answers available on page 79 to 93.

Day 44

Reading Comprehension: Spend 60 minutes on guide 7 reading and doing questions from page 408 to 417. Verify your answers from page 419 till 495.
Vocabulary: Spend the next 60 minutes learning 40 new words at random from guide 1.

Tips for RC:
Note the following while reading

Main idea: Every passage has a focus point around which it revolves. While reading answer the question that why is the passage written? What it is that it’s trying to answer?

Role of each paragraph: Try to find the main purpose of each paragraph – what role does each paragraph play in the passage? Is it trying to support some idea, or giving examples, or provide competing theories or explaining a phenomenon?

Day 45

Vocabulary: Spend the next 60 minutes learning 30 new words at random from guide 1.

Day 46

Vocabulary: Revise all words done so far in 120 minutes.

Day 47: Take OFF

Day 48

Reading Comprehension: In guide 10, from page 18 to 32, spend 50 minutes doing 20 questions. Check your answers from page 35 to 56.
Text Completions: From page 58 to 64 of guide 10, spend 35 minutes doing 25 questions – answers can be checked on page 66 to 68.
Sentence Equivalence: In 20 minutes do the 20 questions from page 80 to 86 of guide 10. Answers can be verified on page 88 to 99.

Tips for RC: Know the Passage. Make sure that you understand the passage in your own words. GRE is unlike IELTS and TOEFL where you can simply answer a lot of questions without understanding the passage at all. In fact techniques such as reading the question first, which do work wonderfully well on TOEFL or IELTS do not work at all on the GRE. If you approach the GRE questions with a fragmented approach you will always fall for the traps.

Day 49

Diagnostic: In guide 9 go through page 54 to 74 and do all 51 questions in 90 minutes – answers and solutions can be seen on page 77 to 106.

Day 50

Diagnostic: In 75 minutes do all 50 questions from page 309 to 328 of guide 9 – answers and solutions can be seen on page 367 to 395.

Day 51

Diagnostic: From guide 9 page 437 to 455, do all 50 questions in 75 minutes – answers and solutions are given on page 496 to 526.

Day 52

Diagnostic: From page 102 to 110, do the 25 questions in 35 minutes of guide 10. All answers and explanations can be found on page 112 to 125.
Diagnostic: In 35 minutes do 25 questions from page 126 to 134 of guide 10 – answers and explanations are on page 136 to 151.
Diagnostic: Spend 35 minutes doing the 25 questions given on page 152 to 160 of guide 10 – answers and explanations can be found on page 162 to 177.

Day 53

Vocabulary: Revise and review all vocabulary in the next 120 minutes.

Day 54: Take OFF

Day 55

Full length Practice test: Spend 60 minutes doing the two verbal sections of power prep test 1.
Full length Practice test: Spend another 60 minutes doing the verbal sections of power prep test 2.

Day 56

Diagnostic: Spend 30 minutes doing the 20 questions on page 18 to 23 of guide 8. If you come across a new word, there is no need to learn it, as going through the vocabulary in this study plan is enough. Check detailed solutions from page 26 to 28.
Diagnostic: Spare another 30 minutes doing the 20 questions on page 1084 to 1089 of guide 8. Check detailed solutions from page 1090 to 1093. Make sure you don’t take any breaks in between.
Diagnostic: Spend 30 minutes doing the 20 questions on page 1094 to 1100 of guide 8. Check detailed solutions from page 1101 to 1103.
Diagnostic: Spend 30 minutes doing the 20 questions on page 1104 to 1110 of guide 8. Check detailed solutions from page 1111 to 1114.

Day 57

Diagnostic In guide 11 do the next 40 questions in 50 minutes from page 2 to 24. Answers available on page 25 to 34.

Day 58

Text Completions In guide 12, do 35 questions in 40 minutes from page 1 to 15 and validate your answers from page 16 to 29.

Day 59

Reading Comprehension From guide 13, page 1 to 30 do 56 questions in 150 minutes. Check your answers and solutions on page 31 to 52.

Day 60

Sentence Equivalence On page 1 to 14 do 56 questions in 120 minutes of guide 14. Answers are given on page 15 to 29.

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