Thoughts on how my studying of the GRE is different than my studying of the SAT

Main Differences

I’ve never been an avid reader. Unless the topic was science fiction, greek mythology, or required reading, I would not read anything. This and the SAT prep crash course that I took heavily affected my approach towards the reading comprehension section on the SAT.

Previous Approach

Before, I would approach the reading comprehension by first reading the questions and attempt to find the answer in the paragraph that I needed to read. I did really poorly on the reading comprehension section of the SAT. However looking back, it’s ironic that I had called that approach “reading comprehension”. There was no comprehension at all in that approach. I was more looking rather than comprehending the material.

New approach

Going through college, I learned how to read. What?

Now, this is what I mean. The point of a college education is to learn the material presented in class and not memorize it so that I can regurgitate it on the exam. With this goal in mind, this meant that I need to read the textbooks/papers to comprehend what the high level main idea is. How to read implies understanding the material at hand so that when I encounter a situation where I need to explain the material in my own words, I can properly rephrase what I learned without messing with the core ideas.

This is how I should have been approaching the reading comprehension section in the SAT, and this is how I will be approaching the GRE reading comprehension section.