Grad school IS a different animal, but it really has nothing to do with your performance on the GRE. Like most standardized tests, it just gives a very surficial idea to graduate acceptance and fellowship committees about your abilities as a student. It’s important to keep in mind that it’s just one ingredient out of many (e.g. GPA, extra-curricular participation, work experience, etc.) in the overrall formula that is used to determine whether or not to admit/fund you. If you are strong in other areas, than your GRE score won’t need to be perfect. I guess I’m saying to study for it, but don’t stress too much over it.

In my experience, graduate school is more political than it is fair. Students with little or no people/communication skills and who relied on their smarts alone for undergraduate success often get frustrated at this fact. If you really want to prepare yourself for graduate school, then take this advice: go to the website of the graduate school(s) that you might want to attend. Spend some time looking into the different professors’ research interests (often found on their websites) and contact those that you might be interested to have as your advisor. Introduce yourself, ask them about any interesting upcoming research opportunities, and offer your resume. My experience is that doing this will leap-frog you to the front of the pack based off of your expressed interest alone, and requirements for admission (including GRE scores) will become almost trivial.

I took the GRE in May. Most people take prep courses that are very expensive. The psych department (my major) at my school had free GRE prep. I didn’t take part in any of this. If you are like me, and study well on your own, it would be okay to just use prep books from a book store. Kaplan is the best. I bought a Kaplan comprehensive study book, verbal workbook, and math workbook. It would also help to get vocabulary flashcards (a significant portion of the verbal section is a test of your vocabulary, and some of the words you’ve probably never even heard of). The concepts in the math section are from high school, but the applications of them are a little more advanced (it is necessary to do a thourough review of the math, and the kaplan books have a math review section). I studied for a little bit every day for two months, and made a 1370 (660 verbal and 710 math). The format of the test is changing this fall, so you may need to look into that. No matter what the format, don’t go into the test unprepared. I know some people who did very well in school who did very poorly on the GRE because they thought they were too “intelligent” to study for it.

At the larger colleges you can find tutor groups for GRE

First hand I took the first test not studying or going to a group

the second time it was so easy