Could memorizing GregMat Vocab Groups 1-28 be enough for V165+?

The degree to which studying any vocabulary helps your verbal score is entirely determined by the degree to which not knowing vocab words is currently holding back your verbal score. For students where that's a significant issue, vocab study can make a really big difference — so long as you can translate it into greater success on vocab questions by not only recognizing more words but understanding the context well enough to make the right choices.

One challenge is that vocab study is never perfectly targeted at exactly what will show up on your exam. You can learn a lot of words without necessarily learning the ones that make a difference for you. All vocab study is statistical — the more words you learn, the better your chances, particularly if the words you're studying are well targeted at the kind of words actually showing up on your tests.

The Gregmat vocab groups significantly overlap with other lists that we and other companies use. They're a decent strategy for some students. One issue is that they tend to skew toward easier vocab that helps with easy and moderate vocab-based questions on the GRE but don't necessarily include enough of the more advanced vocab you may need to reach a 165 verbal, particularly in the harder second section where there can be very challenging vocabulary. Other lists such as the Manhattan Advanced List or our own vocab list can do more to help you get there.

Reach out if you'd like our vocab list, or if you'd like to be notified when we launch our new free vocab tool that helps you prioritize the words most useful for you to study.