Most students preparing for the GRE in 5 weeks benefit from 15-20 hours of study per week, including your class time and independent practice. This breaks down to roughly 3-4 hours daily, which allows you to balance prep with work or school responsibilities while still building the consistency needed for real progress.

Your schedule might look like: attending your 5-week prep class, completing practice problems in your weaker sections, taking at least one full-length practice test weekly, and reviewing mistakes to understand why you missed questions. Working with an experienced tutor can help you use your time efficiently—focusing on high-yield strategies and problems rather than grinding through material that won't impact your score.

You should spend more time on your weaker section, but both matter for your composite score. If you're strong in math but struggle with reading comprehension, it's tempting to only drill verbal—but maintaining your quantitative skills is equally important. A practical approach is to allocate 60-70% of your time to your weaker section while dedicating the rest to keeping your stronger section sharp.

The GRE also weights your two quantitative and verbal section scores, so improvement in either area directly impacts your overall score. Many students find that verbal reasoning and reading comprehension require more time to improve because they involve building strategies for understanding complex passages and nuanced language, while quantitative gains often come faster from targeted problem practice and identifying concept gaps.

Aim for one full-length practice test per week during your 5-week prep—that's 5 tests total—plus an additional diagnostic test at the beginning to establish your baseline. This gives you enough data to track real improvement without overtesting, which can lead to fatigue and burnout right before test day. The GRE is a marathon, not a sprint, so full-length tests help you build stamina and practice pacing under realistic conditions.

After each test, spend at least a day reviewing every question you missed or found difficult, not just focusing on wrong answers. Understanding why you selected the wrong choice and what the right answer approach was is where the learning happens. Between tests, you'll do targeted practice on specific skills and question types based on your weak areas identified during review.

Test anxiety often stems from feeling unprepared or uncertain about what to expect. A structured 5-week prep program addresses both: you'll become familiar with every question format, practice under timed conditions repeatedly, and develop a clear strategy for each section. By test day, the GRE won't feel like a surprise anymore—it'll feel like a test you've already taken many times before.

Practical confidence-building strategies include: practicing with the official ETS GRE tests (the closest thing to real test experience), reviewing your practice test performance to see tangible improvement, and working through difficult problems to prove to yourself that you can solve them. Many students also benefit from developing a test-day routine and learning to manage pacing anxiety specifically—knowing you have a strategy for skipping hard questions and coming back to them takes pressure off.

The analytical writing section is often overlooked because students focus heavily on quantitative and verbal, but it deserves dedicated practice time—aim for 2-3 hours across your 5 weeks. You'll write two essays under timed conditions (Analyze an Issue and Analyze an Argument), and most of your improvement comes from understanding the format, practicing the structure, and getting feedback on your actual writing.

Unlike the multiple-choice sections, writing improvement is harder to measure with just practice problems. Working through sample prompts, timing yourself to 30 minutes per essay, and getting feedback on your reasoning and organization will help you identify patterns in your writing. Many students find that the analytical writing section is more about following a clear structure and supporting claims effectively than demonstrating eloquent prose.

Yes. Varsity Tutors connects you with expert tutors who can review your practice tests, identify patterns in your mistakes, and create a targeted study plan based on your specific weak areas. This personalized approach is especially valuable in a condensed 5-week timeframe—rather than spending time on material you've already mastered, a tutor can help you focus on the high-impact areas that will move your score.

Whether you're struggling with specific math concepts, reading comprehension strategies, or essay structure, personalized 1-on-1 instruction helps you understand not just what the right answer is, but why you're missing questions. This is particularly helpful for test-anxious students or those preparing for grad school applications in the Minneapolis area, where timing and accuracy matter equally.