<p>About how many words should I know if I'm to have a very high probability of recognizing every word I see while taking the GRE?</p>
<p>Theoretically, you can just go through the Barrons 2000+ word monster and you should be able to recognize most of the words.</p>
<p>Practically, burn through a few 500+ lists and try to learn the word roots.</p>
<p>Well, I have a whole year until I apply so I might do barrons 2000+.</p>
<p>Whereabouts can one get a hold of that Barron's word list? I've searched online and book stores quite a bit but can't find it.</p>
<p>I haven't taken the GRE yet (hopefully I will in September). I have Kaplan's 500 words of flashcards, and someone I know used only them and did wonderfully. BUT you have to know them well...that means learning the synonyms on the backs. (So, I guess it's really more than 500 words.) I'm doing that, learning the Latin roots and prefixes, and learning any other words I have time to do. I want to apply in the Fall, so I can't wait too long anymore.</p>
<p>Good luck.</p>
<p>GRE</a> Flashcards at Free Flash Card Maker by ProProfs</p>
<p>Various online GRE vocab flash cards. I just bookmarked this page and burned through it whenever I had free time. </p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>If you learn ALL of Barron's, understand how to do reading comprehension and sentence completions, that list should take you into the ~750 territory.</p>
<p>V750? That's an impressive score.</p>
<p>Most high scorers probably won't be able to tell you :D I scored a 790 on the GRE verbal and can't say whether I recognized every single word (most likely not) but I did know the vast majority of them and the rest I could figure out using Latin and Greek routes. I would say that when I bought Barron's book (with the 3,500 word list) I knew nearly all of the words already and at least two different meanings for each one.</p>
<p>The thing about vocabulary is that it's not something that's built in a day, a week, or even a month. Flash cards and word lists are inadequate ways to build vocabulary. And the differences between scores at the higher levels is not memory of words but learning the subtle shades of difference between the meanings of a particular word and the uses for it. The really hard questions on the GRE are going to use the 3rd or 4th definition in a really specific way on an antonym question and you're just going to have to KNOW it, or know enough about words and roots to figure out the answer within a reasonable distance.</p>
<p>Personally, I wouldn't obsess about learning thousands of vocabulary words. If you recognize about 75% of the words on Barron's list, skip the flash cards/memory thing and work on your strategy. If you recognize 65%, you may want to make your OWN flash cards of the words you don't know (I cannot stress MAKING YOUR OWN enough. The Kaplan/pre-made sets rarely have the words that you really want, and making your own helps you remember them). If you recognize less than half, then you need to set aside the GRE book and begin reading. Anything. Textbooks, magazines like USNWR and The Economist and the New York Times/Wall Street Journal, etc. Since you have a year you have plenty of time to read!</p>
<p>Great advice, juillet! Thank you! :)</p>
<p>Another fun way to learn obscure vocab words is freerice.com.</p>
<p>number2.com is helpful for me...esp. for vocab.</p>
<p>As for me, the hardest questions are in analogies. Sometimes it is really difficult to catch a bridge between words + there often are very similar answers. In my prep I use Big Book verbal tests and after taking the test make flashcards on all the words I don't know. Also, the good thing is Just Vocabulary podcast - it is rather easy way to learn ~900 words.</p>
<p>In response to Julliet's comments,</p>
<p>At the upper-echelons of the GRE-scores, reading things like The Economist and the New York Times/Wall Street Journal is way too inefficient. Can you imagine reading pages and pages of magazines in order to "train" for the GRE? I seldom, if ever, see a word I don't know in common literature. Although I agree about the secondary/tertiary meanings to words, there are more efficient ways at learning them. Further, not ALL the difficult questions are on secondary/tertiary meanings - some just come down to, do you know this word or not?</p>
<p>As for my personal experience, there was one word I didn't recognize on the GRE (her score exceeded mine by 10). It was an antonym question (~14 overall), that I believe was the first "error" I made. This wasn't about a meaning I was not familiar with - I had just never seen the word before (although I could've deduced the meaning based on its double-root words (!) if I wasn't in a cold sweat).</p>
<p>Anyhoos - learn Barron's - all of it. Then go online and find more word lists (google it). You'll find that for most lists, you'll already know 98% of all the words already. So make a new list, of non-Barron's words. Get a good dictionary, and make a list of definitions. Also - go get some study guides, and do the questions there. Those esoteric words with even more esoteric second and third meanings, will appear in these study guides (the antonyms sections). Learn them. Get familiar with how these weird words work (say that 10 times fast).</p>
<p>That would be my recommended strategy for the GRE verbal section.</p>
<p>Edit: I should mention that my "strategy" assumes you are just trying to conquer vocabulary and already have a handle on sentence completion/reading comprehension (as I mentioned in my first post). If you still have trouble with these, I suggest doing practice exams in study guides. Study WHY the answers are the way they are. Again, I do not specifically vouch for reading common literature due to its lack of efficiency.</p>
<p>How do you learn thoses latin roots? I mean, do you have some kind of textbooks or something?</p>
<p>In general, I think that Juillet has great advice (though I have to disagree about the value of making one's own flash cards: if you can find a good set, I think it's much better to buy them, but it's usually hard to find a good set).</p>
<p>I got an 800V, and knew all the words I saw, using two sources: words from real, previously published GREs, plus the Barrons 3500 word list. Not to oversimplify: I also read a ton. However, if you have only a few months, you are most likely going to have to focus on memorizing rather than on reading. The Barrons list is very good for the GRE, but I think it favors really difficult words, so you will want to learn a lot of words from <em>real exams</em> as well.</p>
<p>Also, Silky, I think that the roots list in Princeton Review's Word Power for the GRE is truly excellent: better than the ones found in most textbooks.</p>