GRE® Help: How realistic is a 1000 for GRE®?

[Itsme]

Hello all.

I am a 31 year old male currently prepping for the GRE.
A program in which I am applying for requires a 1000 minimum for acceptance.
This concerns me because I have NEVER taken a standardized test before.
My math skills are pretty weak and verbal are average at best. I have 1 month to prepare for this exam and was wondering how realistic is a 1000 for a guy like me? Thanks!

Ed

[Gre1984]

Hey ed, I think you have an advantage in verbal because of your age. Just study, study, study, study, and study.

[Sandls816]

Hi,
I think it depends on how much time you have and are willing to dedicate to this.
1000 is not that much (max is 1600).
Have you taken the tests of gre.org? I would suggest you do this first thing to see how much you will score, establish the baseline and find your weak spots. (Personally I think the real test is a little harder, but my real score was really close to what I was scoring on these tests)

Then see what areas you need to improve on, one month is not a lot of time, but personally I think it's easier and faster to improve math skills rather than vocabulary, since learning new words takes time ( you can only learn and realistically keep in your memory only so many (20-30 for me) words a day and most of these words won't even show up on the test). However with math, you're learning skills that apply to multiple questions, it's more of understanding the concept rather than just "mindless" memorization. Check out Barron's guide (How to Prepare for GRE Test), it was the most useful to me with math part. It has a very good Math review and test questions are pretty close to the test level.

Check out GRE Preparation. It has small reviews of different GRE prep books.

Good Luck!!!