Top 3 GRE Coaching Centres – September 2020

India is a hotbed for students wanting to go abroad for their Masters programs. With so many good engineering and arts colleges in the country, there are students from all over the world that come to study in India. With so many people wanting to go abroad, the demand for GRE coaching centres and GMAT coaching centres has increased tremendously. There is a myriad of educational consultancies that do not offer GRE classes or GMAT classes, but they help with the admissions process. 

However, you need to keep in mind that any educational consultancy or admissions counsellor who does not charge you a fee, is making money off of you when you pay your tuition fee to one of the colleges that they suggest for you. This severely compromises the integrity of the counselling that they do. 

But there are only a few centres that care about their students and will do everything in their power to make sure that their students get into top tier universities across the world. The top 3 are listed below: 

Plan A:

This is one of the newest educational consultancies that have cropped up within the last few years. They have produced excellent results from their students across the GMAT and GRE with the lowest scores being 640 on the GMAT and 312 on the GRE. These are the lowest scores from their centre mind you!!! 

They have a team of consultants that help you with everything. They conduct both GRE classes and GMAT classes. And they even help with admissions and career guidance. Even their online coursework is so much better than most of the market. They have simple explanations for complex concepts and they faculty at Plan A use the concepts to teach you how to think, thereby equipping you with more than just training for an exam.

Gradvine:

Gradvine is another such consultancy that really gets invested in the future of their students. They have access to hundreds of students that they have helped get into top tier universities who in turn act as consultants for the admissions process and essays and so on. They have a very friendly and welcoming community of advisors and consultants, who have all been on the same journey as their clients at some point of time or the other. 

Gradvine feels like a bunch of friends helping you out. They however, doe not offer GMAT classes or GRE classes. 

Crackverbal:

Crackverbal is an institute that has presence all over the country and is the oldest of these 3 consultancies. They have the most experience in terms of volumes and can be categorized as a giant compared to the previous two companies. However, due to their volumes, they find it harder to adhere to their standards than Gradvine or Plan A. 

While the two smaller companies have higher success rates (more like >98%), CrackVerbal has bigger numbers when it comes to the number of students who have been successfully trained and admitted.

In conclusion, the smaller or niche brands offer more guidance and a personal touch, whereas CrackVerbal has a lot more resources at its disposal. The choice is up to you. But these 3 consultancies come highly recommended. 

Educational Consultancies that help get you into Ivy League Universities

There are over 100,000 Educational Consultancies across the world that all claim that they can get you into an Ivy League College, but unfortunately for you, there are hardly a 100 all across the world that are even equipped to be able to do that. Some are pure admissions consulting firms whereas some are equipped as GRE coaching centres and/or GMAT coaching centres.

For those that offer you GRE classes or GMAT classes, they stand a better chance of helping you get into a good school as they know what score they need to equip you for. Even this is a big question mark as most of these GRE training centres and/or GMAT training centres do not have stable faculty.

So, it is in your best interests to do your research and figure out which kind of consultancy works best for you.

Does ISB accept GRE? – Indian School of Business

 Yes, the Indian School of Business does accept the GRE score for their MBA application or PGPM application. This is in response to a recent trend in multiple top tier MBA universities where more of them are accepting applicants with a GRE score rather than the GMAT score.

What started this trend you may ask? The answer to that is quite simple. The GRE is an easier exam to crack than the GMAT.

A lot of test takers despite having spent weeks and months studying at GMAT coaching centres do not end up doing well on the GMAT. This leads them to get disheartened and they tend to give up on their dreams of getting into B schools. However, a few universities began accepting GRE scores for the MBA applications and that gave way to this mass adoption of the GRE over the GMAT.

Today, there are far more GRE coaching centres and online GRE classes than there are for GMAT.

Home Based GRE Test

 After the COVID-19 pandemic, and the subsequent lockdown, ETS has begun to offer a home-based version of the GRE. That means that a test taker can appear for the main GRE from the comfort of their own home. 

Of course, there are a few extra steps and procedures to take and follow, but it is quite convenient. A surprisingly large number of test takers have opted to take their GRE from their homes rather than postponing their GRE test date. 

If you are not sure about how to go about this process, then kindly verify with an ETS partnered GRE coaching centre to find out more. They may even be able to help you more than other centres with GRE classes. 

Find the best way forward under counsel and consultation as this will have a large impact on your future and where you end up studying and working.

GRE – Best Practices for Preparation

 The GRE can be an overly complex exam for a lot of people. But there are a significant number of GRE test takers that have performed exceptionally well on the test. Most of these test takers are ones that are products of some of the best GRE coaching centres in the world. 

It is exceedingly rare that someone who has scored above 330 on the GRE has not had the help of GRE classes. So, your first step if you find yourself overwhelmed by the GRE is to join GRE coaching classes.

However, if you insist on preparing on your own, for whatever reasons, then the following are some of the best practices for GRE preparation. 

• Study regularly for at least 2 hours everyday

• Learn 40 words per day

• Practice 20 questions every day

• Take a minimum of 6 Mock tests

• Always revise 

Universities that do not need GRE scores

 There are many universities all over the world that accept applications without the need of a GRE score, however, most of these universities are not amongst the best. These are institutions that are trying desperately to grow and increase their student pool and market value. 

The quality of education and the quality of future you will have if you graduate from one of these universities is far lesser than what they would  be if you were to graduate from a university that requires the GRE. 

Your reticence to take the GRE reflects your own self-worth and motivation for self-improvement and self-care. Would you rather not put in the effort for two or three months to get a chance at a much better life, by studying for the GRE?

If you need help, then sign up for GRE classes. There are many good GRE coaching centres that can help you ace the test.

GRE – Verbal Section – Tips and tricks

The verbal section on the GRE can be a thorn in the side of many a test taker. But it does not have to be. Unlike the GMAT, the GRE has a very set syllabus that has boundaries of what can and cannot be asked. 

This implies that there is a set amount of knowledge that you will need to learn in order to ace the Verbal section on the GRE. 

The GRE Verbal Section consists of basically 3 types of questions:

1. Vocabulary – Text Completion, Sentence Equivalence

2. Critical Reasoning

3. Reading Comprehension

Out of these 3 categories, the only one that requires you to put in effort to learn is the vocabulary section. This consists of approximately 4000 words that you need to know. A native English speaker is bound to know at least 1500-2000 words. 

If you do not know that many words, it is best that you sign up for GRE classes. 

If you do know at least 1500-2000 words then it should take you only about 4-6 weeks to learn the remaining words as most of them are synonyms of words that we already know and use regularly. 

As for the other two sections, they test your logical and reasoning ability. The best approach to this would be to practice as many lateral thinking problems as possible. Even practicing some of the free GMAT resources can help as the difficulty level of similar questions on the GMAT is higher than the GRE counterparts.