I studied for about 1 month (5 days a week, ~2hrs a day) before taking the test. I mainly used barrons as a guide. I memorized all the high frequency words (i think theres like 330 of them), and just looked over the rest. I felt i was pretty comfortable with the verbal section but ended up not doing as well as i thought. Many of the words i studied did show up on the test, but they werent always in antonym or the analogy questions. Many times they would be inbedded in paragraphs or in the answers to questions. As far as the direct vocabulary type questions (antonyms and analogy), i got the short end of the stick and had to guess on several.
Short of memorizing lots of vocab, its going to be hard to study for the verbal section. I cant even imaging studying 3000+ words like most lists have. I used flash cards for the 300 words and had them all memorized in about 5 days.
The math section i didnt feel as corfortable on but ended up doing fairly well. Im not sure if i just got lucky, or if the canceling out and taking an educated guess method that barrons suggest worked well. I didnt get any direct triangle questions like are in almost all of the practice tests. I worked on them the most since it seemed it was inevitable i would get a couple triangle questions, but i didnt.
The ETS powerprep software came in the mail THE DAY OF my exam, so that didnt really help much.
I havent received my results for the writing section, but issue topic i kind of froze up on and had to use some poor examples. The arguement topic i think i did pretty well on though. Theres no real way to study or practice for these. Some people can write on the spot and some cant. I know some of my friends that take can spend all night writing a 2 page paper. These kind of people arent going to do very well in this part.
Overall i would suggest taking as many practice test as you can. In my experience you will score a little higher on the actual test then on the barrons. The math section on the actually test seems to be a little easier, while the verbal is a little more dificult.
Note: originally posted at http://www.rxpgonline.com/postt47163.html
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