Starting in September? Build a Plan That Fits Your Deadline.

Labor Day weekend is over. Somewhere right now, someone is cracking open a GRE book for the first time and thinking, "My first deadline is in December. That's MONTHS away. I've got plenty of time." Then they close the book and go make a snack.

Here's the blunt verdict. Starting in September is fine. Starting in September and acting like you have all fall is a TERRIBLE IDEA. The calendar isn't your problem. The story you tell yourself about the calendar is.

So let's count, for real.

Count the weeks you ACTUALLY have

Say your earliest application deadline is December 1. Today is September 3. That's about 13 weeks. Sounds roomy, right? Now start subtracting.

• The score cushion. Your scores have to reach the school before the deadline, not on the night of it. Leave yourself a cushion of a couple of weeks between your test and your deadline.
• The second shot. Don't bet everything on one sitting. If your first score isn't where you want it, you need room on the calendar to test again. ScoreSelect, the GRE option that lets you send only the scores you pick, means a second try doesn't have to follow you to schools. But it only helps if you left time for that second try.
• The application itself. Essays, recommendations, a résumé. Those don't write themselves in the two days after your test.
• Life. A work crunch. Thanksgiving. A cold that eats four days. It's coming. Plan for it now, not when it shows up.

I'll bet your real number of training weeks is SMALLER than you thought. Here's how that December 1 example shakes out:

Stop reading and do this with YOUR deadline. Seriously. Grab a pen. Don't read another word until you have a number written down.

Got it? Good. If your number is six, that isn't a disaster. Six weeks is a plan. What IS a disaster is "studying" for 13 imaginary weeks and discovering in November that you only ever had six. If you want more on picking the date itself, read our post on when and how to take the test.

Know the event you're training for

You can't plan for a test you haven't looked at. Here's what the GRE General Test looks like right now, straight from ETS's breakdown of the sections:

• About 3 hours and 45 minutes in total.
• Analytical Writing first: an Issue essay and an Argument essay, 30 minutes each, scored 0 to 6.
• Two Verbal sections, 20 questions in 30 minutes each.
• Two Quant sections, 20 questions in 35 minutes each.
• One unscored section that looks just like the others, so you can't tell which one it is. Treat every section like it counts.
• A ten minute break after the third section.
• Verbal and Quant each scored 130 to 170.
• An on screen calculator, and you can skip, mark and change answers inside a section.
• It's adaptive by section: how you do on your first Verbal or Quant section decides how hard the second one is.

Read that list again. This is NOT a quiz. It's nearly four hours of thinking. You wouldn't train for a marathon by running sprints, and you won't get ready for the GRE by doing 15 minute sets on your phone and calling it a week.

5 ways people waste a fall

1. Taking a practice test every few days. It feels productive. It isn't. A practice test is a measuring device. It tells you roughly where you are and points at your 'weak spots,' but it DOESN'T make you better. INSTEAD: one full length practice test per week, at most. ETS's free POWERPREP practice tests are your most realistic yardstick. Take them like the real thing, essays included, in one sitting. Then spend MORE time reviewing the test than you spent taking it.
2. Collecting questions instead of commanding them. What's more powerful: being an acquaintance of 5,000 questions, or the commander of 1,000? Racing through new sets just to see a bigger number is the gym membership you never use. INSTEAD: redo every question you missed or guessed on, a few days later, until you can explain each step out loud. It's not about the right answer. It's about WHAT YOU'RE DOING to get there.
3. Doing the work in your head. Some people think they're 'smart enough' to skip notes. THAT is the thinking that costs points. Working in your head leads to re-reading, re-reading eats time, and lost time looks like a 'pacing problem.' INSTEAD: write on your scratch paper for every single question. Use the calculator for ugly arithmetic, but do your thinking on paper.
4. Treating Quant like a math class. The GRE uses math to measure how you think. It doesn't hand out points for elegant algebra. INSTEAD: test values, test the answers, and write it all down. Try the one below.
5. Ignoring the essays until the last week. Two timed essays open your test. Walking in cold means starting the day rattled. INSTEAD: write one Issue essay and one Argument essay each week, 30 minutes each, starting this week.

Use every week you counted

Once you have your number, split it up. Say it's six weeks:

• Week 1: take one practice test to get a baseline, then start learning the question types and the tactics, not just the formulas.
• Weeks 2 through 5: train. Let your review notes tell you what to work on. If you can't name WHY you missed a question, you aren't done reviewing it. 'I have no idea' isn't allowed. Look at your scratch paper and find the cause. One practice test per week, and that's the ceiling.
• Week 6: test conditions only. Full length timing, the essays, the break, the works. Then follow our guide to the week leading up to your test.

Got ten weeks instead? Same shape, just a longer middle. Got three? Then you have a forced choice to make: what do you want MORE, the deadline you circled, or the score you need? Sometimes the honest answer is applying a little later with a much stronger score. For more ways to squeeze every hour, read four ways to maximize your prep.

The GRE is a standardized, predictable test. That means you can train for it, and it means it will give you the score you EARN. September gives you enough time to earn a good one, as long as you stop pretending about the calendar.

So here's your job for today. Open your calendar. Write down your earliest deadline. Count backward the way we did above, cushion, second shot, application, life. Circle the date of your first test and put it in writing. Then block out this weekend for a full practice test, essays and all. "Sometime this fall" isn't a plan. A date is.