How to get your best GRE Quantitative Score

To max out your GRE Quant score, here are some strategies we recommend!

High Achievers Avoid “Silly Mistakes”.

What separates the high scorers from the average scorers? It’s not just mathematical ability and content knowledge. The high achievers also know a few tricks of the trade.

Check your work!

When you finish a problem, don’t just select the answer and move on. Try to make sure your answer makes sense in the problem. If there is a way to plug your answer back into the problem to verify it, do that. If the answer can be found a different way, try it to double-check if you have enough time. When you go too quickly, you might find yourself making silly mistakes.

Training and Mindset

It’s also a mind game! The top scorers get their heads completely into the game. In fact, the way that you can advance from middle-of-the-road to absolutely stellar is to have a growth mindset.

Using (and Not Using) the Calculator on the GRE

The GRE is unique in that it is given entirely online. You are not allowed to use your own calculator. Instead, there will be a calculator provided on the computer. For more details, check out our GRE Calculator guide.

One big piece of advice: Don’t immediately jump to the calculator for every problem! For one thing, the ETS Calculator (provided on the GRE) is a bit cumbersome to use if you’re used to working with a physical calculator. Pointing and clicking on the calculator is time-consuming. Make good use of your scratch paper instead.

Secondly, it will be a much better use of your time to think about the concepts within the problems rather than the computations involved. Often, problems are set up in a way to make the calculations easy, but if you approach them wrong you might waste time doing unnecessary button-pushing. Generally, you should avoid calculator use unless working out big multiplications, divisions, etc.