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Hi. Thank you for sharing your experience. I am about to take a GRE myself so this type of insight is very helpful. I too remember making a lot of flashcards for the SAT. I had a rather relaxed approach to studying but the consistency over time made it seem like everything I learned showed up one way or another on the test, especially vocal words.

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As I'm sure you know (but maybe others don't), the main difference is that the GRE adapts to how you're doing, asking harder / easier questions when you get them right / wrong. This means the early questions have outweighed importance in your overall score and hence pacing yourself is very important. (I am very glad I did a few practice tests)

You want to leave yourself time for (hopefully) hard questions at the end, but a silly mistake early on hurts, so it pays to take your time in the first few minutes as well.

Fortunately it should be obvious how you are doing after the first group of questions, if they go from roll-your-eyes easy to ones that make you pause a moment. :)

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