Below are the details of my preparation spanning over a period of 4 months. I have attended my GRE t

Below are the details of my preparation spanning over a period of 4 months. I have attended my GRE training at Princeton Review.
Total Preparation Time: ~150 hours(excluding tests)
Total number of practice tests taken: 14

Verbal:

Words:
The number of words that I have learned proved out to be of little help in the actual GRE test. I have completed Barron's 1100 app and the hit parade in the GRE Supplement book of Princeton. The words asked were not advanced but were all similar in meaning and hence it was difficult to pick the right one. Learning the words in their respective contexts can be more helpful than learning them from flashcards. Flashcards are definitely an effective way to revise them.
Recommended material:
Hit Parade (Group 1 -6) Princeton Review Supplement/ Barron's 333
Barron's 1100 app
It is nice to start off with Hit parade or Barron's 333 and then move on to the advanced words. If you have enough time and a good memory power then you can learn up-to 3000 words and also complete the book Word Power Made Easy.

Reading Comprehension(RC):
Nearly half of the questions in verbal are from RC hence it is better to concentrate more on them than learning words. Most of the passages on the gre are abstracts without any proper introduction or conclusion and hence to answer the questions you need to read the passage completely. There are no shortcuts or techniques as such. To help improve your reading skills, complete all the RC drills on the Princeton Portal and read an eclectic mix of articles on a regular basis. Do implement the Process of Elimination strategies outlined in the Princeton Review Manual.
Recommended material:
Princeton Supplement
Online Princeton portal
ETS Official Guide
RCs saved my day as I was completely clueless in Sentence Equivalence and Text completion. Do all the material on the portal for verbal and read a lot of stuff.

Test Taking Strategy:
For the verbal section, I completed text completion and sentence equivalence first and then went on to do the RCs according to number of questions for each passage. I used to debate less among the options in sentence equivalence to save time for RCs. But I would recommend you to devise a strategy congenial to you.

Quant:

Quant was very different to the questions on the portal and supplement. They were not at a different difficulty level but were based more on logical reasoning than definite quantitative answers. Quant Comp and multiple correct answer questions were asked more frequently and were very lengthy to solve. R.S. Agarwal does help to a certain amount in the requisite topics. Supplement and portal are the most helpful among all the material. The ETS Official guide's review of topics gives the necessary basics and the questions in the book are the closest to the questions on the final test.
Recommended Material:
Princeton Supplement
Portal(All topics especially Charts)
ETS Official Guide
R.S. Agarwal(only the required topics)
Do read the theory in the guide and star mark the points that you come across for the first time. Review them on the day before the exam.

Test Taking Strategy:
Till you consistently get 165 on the quant section, concentrate on accuracy and later on improve your speed. To get above 165 you just need to undo the silly mistakes. Hence concentrate on speed to solve the questions in 2 passes. Mark the doubtful questions in the first pass and solve them first in the second pass along with all other questions again. I found this strategy to be very effective in reducing the number of silly mistakes that I committed.

AWA:

I did not practice much in AWA. Just wrote a few essays a week prior to the test. Reading the sample responses on the official guide is a must.

Practice Tests:

I have taken around 14 practice tests and most of them in the final week of my preparation. The scores in the final week did not fluctuate much. I have taken 2 tests per day for 4 days in the week building up to the test and did not find much improvement from my first test in the week to the last one. Hence I would suggest you to take 1 test a day and review it to improve your score in the next one. The authenticity of the questions of the actual gre could only be matched by the practice tests of Manhattan Review Book and the Official ETS practice tests (Powerprep-II). Princeton Review test scores provide the best score that you can achieve if you write them seriously enough. The ETS practice tests are also very close (+ or - 5) to what you will get on the final test. If you are writing the tests in the month of August or September, during which the ETS tests are infamous for being difficult then you can expect a score of -3 to -5 of your ETS practice test scores if you have not written them casually. Do practice different strategies to find the best one for you.
Recommended Tests:
Manhattan Review book
ETS Powerprep-II
ETS Official Guide
Princeton Review portal


ALL THE BEST!!!!! :)