"Youth is wasted on the young."

Now, if you're young, the gravity of this saying might not resonate with you as much as it does for me. But I'm in my 40s. Although I have a lot more options than I did when I was in my 20s, there are many things that are now much more difficult to do.

Back then, at least theoretically, it was easier for me to be physically healthy and resilient. I could take up a new sport without fear of getting hurt. With wider circles of friends and acquaintances, it was much easier to meet new people and form relationships. I could stay up late and have a few drinks without regretting it, watch bands play without my feet and ears aching, and be more spontaneous. I had the freedom to try new things, move to different places, change careers, and explore the world. Yes, I can still do those things, but it's different now. I'm older. I have more responsibilities and am more set in my ways.

When someone is starting GRE prep, it's natural for them to focus on doing GRE questions. After all, isn't that what you have to do when you take the GRE - solve questions? 

One problem with this, however, is that ETS - the company that creates the GRE - is as miserly as the Grinch when it comes to releasing official questions. Even though there are a lot of questions in the old GRE Big Book, they're not quite as good as the more recent material: the ETS Official Guide, the ETS Verbal and Quant Practice books, and the 5 Powerprep practice tests.

Which leads me to say, "ETS questions are wasted on the young", if we define the "young" as those new to GRE prep. Because what I see a lot of people do - whether they're ready for them or not - is attempt to solve all the above ETS questions very quickly, and then ask where they can get more GRE prep material. But usually, these people are missing some golden opportunities:

1. They weren't ready to solve those questions to begin with because they hadn't yet mastered foundation and strategies. At Gregmat, we talk a lot about foundation, so I won't rehash that discussion here.

2. They didn't think very deeply about the questions, or analyze them, either while they were doing them or afterwards. Hey, if you get a question right, why analyze it, right??

My friends, ETS questions have a lot to teach us - even people who have been doing this as long as I have. Furthermore, these questions were developed with the utmost care to be fair and standardized. If we learn a lesson from an ETS question, there is a high probability that the lesson will come in handy on a future question.

Let's consider both a hypothetical verbal question and a quant question. If you're looking at a Reading Comprehension question, for example, you probably picked an answer for it. But analyzing it in more detail can yield a treasure-trove of skill building.

What type of question is it - i.e., what skill, specifically, is it testing? Primary purpose, function of a sentence, ability to locate a detail, inference? What wording in the question stem seems to let you know that?

What part of the passage was most helpful in determining the answer? How might someone realize that was the right part of the passage to read? How did ETS make the wording of the right answer less appealing to the average Joe?

Which wrong answer choice(s) are most likely to trick people? What was attractive about those choices? What exactly was the wording that made them wrong? Where exactly can you point to in the passage to prove they're wrong?

Answering these questions and discussing them with others is pretty cool since it eventually allows you to draw conclusions about the GRE and the way it's written. ETS tends to make wrong answers attractive by__________ and right answers unattractive by ____________, for example. I bet you can fill in these blanks after analyzing a few RC questions.

For quant questions: what reasoning opportunity was there? What concepts were being tested? How did ETS make the test of those concepts interesting or unusual? What strategy is quickest to solve the question? A good rule of thumb: analyze any ETS quant questions you found to be difficult or time-consuming. You will probably find a faster way to do them, and eventually realize that they weren't that bad.

Warning: when most people get an ETS question wrong, they consider the right answer and tell themselves something like "ok, I see how that makes sense". However, this falls well short of our analysis goals. We want evidence someone understands the question - as a tutor, I'd like to see the person redo the question at some point without merely memorizing the answer or solution, and then be able to say, "here is what I missed the first time, and here is a good way to think about this question now". We do not build skill through passively reading someone else's solution as much as by executing a solution ourselves, and considering what that solution entailed.

The Bottom Line

You'll almost certainly DO a lot of ETS questions, but I wonder: what will you learn from them about the test? I hope you'll devote some of your study time to thoughtful analysis of questions, so you develop more insight into how the test is written and how it's trying to challenge you.