Test Day

The night before Test Day, gather the following things together:

• ID
• admission ticket
• a watch
• a bottle of water
• aspirin or other painkiller, in case you get a headache
• a snack, such as fruit or an energy bar, to keep your energy up for the later sections of the test
• names of schools you’d like to receive your scores

Test Day should start with a moderate, high-energy breakfast. Cereal, fruit, bagels, or eggs are good. Avoid doughnuts, pastries, or anything else with a lot of sugar. Also, unless you are utterly catatonic without it, it’s a good idea to stay away from coffee.

Yes, perhaps you drink two cups every morning and don’t even notice it. But it’s different during the test. Coffee won’t make you alert (your adrenaline will do that much more effectively); it will just give you the jitters. Kaplan has done experiments in which test takers go into one exam having drunk various amounts of coffee and another exam without having drunk coffee. The results indicate that even the most caffeine-addicted test takers will lose their focus midway through the second section if they’ve had coffee, but they report no alertness problems without it.

When you get to the test center, you will be seated at a computer station. Some administrative questions will be asked before the test begins and, once you’re done with those, you’re set to go. While you’re taking the test, a small clock will count down the time you have left in each section. The computer will tell you when you’re done with each section and when you’ve completed the test.

Here are some last-minute reminders to help guide your work on the test:

• Take a few minutes now to look back over your preparation and give yourself credit for all the work you put into it. Confidence is far more useful than distress.
• Don’t bother trying to figure out which section is the experimental section. It can’t help you, and you might make a tragic mistake if you guess wrong. Instead, just do your best on every section.
• Dress in layers for maximum comfort. This way, you can adjust to the room’s temperature accordingly.
• During the exam, try not to fixate on what your score is or how you’re doing so far. It’s counterproductive to continue to think about questions you’ve already answered or ones you haven’t gotten to yet. If you worry about the next section, or the one you’ve just completed, you’ll just feel overwhelmed. Instead, focus on the question-by-question task of picking the correct answer choice. Try to take things one step at a time. Concentrate on each question, each passage, and each essay prompt—on the mechanics, in other words—and you’ll avoid cognitive confusion.

After all the hard work that you’ve put in preparing for and taking the GRE, make sure you take time to celebrate afterward. Plan to get together with friends the evening after the test. You prepared for the test ahead of time. You did your best. You’re going to get a great score.