Relearning math for the GRE when you haven't done algebra in ten years

You’re applying to a PhD or an MPH program, you last solved for x in a college course you barely remember, and the Quant section is the one part of the application you can’t write your way around. The math the GRE tests is short enough to list on a single page, and that list is below, followed by a six-week daily plan built for someone with a job.

Most adults in your position do the wrong thing first. They buy a thick prep book, open it to chapter one, and spend three weeks re-reading arithmetic they already know while the topics that will actually cost them points sit untouched in chapter nine. We’ll do it the other way around: find out what’s missing, then rebuild exactly that.

What the GRE actually tests, the whole list

ETS publishes the complete content list in its free GRE Math Review, and it’s worth reading the headings once so the scope stops feeling infinite. Everything the Quant section can ask falls into four buckets.

Arithmetic. Integers and their properties (divisibility, remainders, primes, even and odd), fractions, decimals, exponents and roots, ratios, percent, absolute value, and the number line. This bucket is bigger than it looks because number properties show up inside questions that are nominally about something else.

Algebra. Simplifying expressions, linear equations and inequalities, systems of two equations, quadratics you can factor, function notation, coordinate geometry (slope, intercepts, distance, the equation of a line), and the word problems built on all of that: rate, work, mixture, simple and compound interest. The word problems are where most of the algebra points actually live.

Geometry. Lines and angles, triangles (the Pythagorean theorem, special right triangles, similar triangles, the triangle inequality), quadrilaterals, circles (circumference, area, arcs, sectors, inscribed angles), and the volume and surface area of rectangular boxes and cylinders. No proofs. No trigonometry.

Data analysis. Mean, median, mode, range, standard deviation (conceptually, not by formula), quartiles and percentiles, counting methods (combinations and permutations), basic probability, reading tables and graphs, and the normal distribution at the level of “about 68 percent within one standard deviation.” This is the bucket adults most often skip and most often regret skipping.

That’s the entire syllabus. Four buckets.

How the GRE asks it

The content is only half the story, because the GRE wraps it in formats most adults have never seen. According to ETS, the Quant measure is 27 questions split across two sections, 12 questions in 21 minutes and then 15 questions in 26 minutes, for 47 minutes total. An on-screen calculator is available throughout. That works out to roughly 1 minute 45 seconds per question, which sounds generous until you meet the formats.

There are four of them. Quantitative comparison gives you two quantities and asks which is larger, or whether it can’t be determined; the answer choices never change, and these questions have their own guide on this site. Multiple choice with one answer looks like every test you’ve taken. Multiple choice with one or more answers has no partial credit, so you must find every correct choice. Numeric entry gives you a box and no choices at all, which removes the option of working backward from the answers. Data interpretation sets attach several questions to one table or chart.

Practice the formats early. Two of them (quantitative comparison and select-all-that-apply) reward a way of thinking that’s closer to logic than to computation, and adults who only drill textbook problems arrive on test day fluent in the math and lost in the question.

Why starting at chapter one fails

A 600-page book is organized for completeness, not for you. If your gaps are in exponents and coordinate geometry, the book still makes you walk through forty pages of fractions to get there, and a working adult with forty minutes a night runs out of weeks before the book runs out of chapters. The other failure is subtler: re-reading material you already know feels productive, so people do it instead of the uncomfortable work on the topics they don’t.

The fix is a diagnostic before any studying. ETS offers two free full-length practice tests through POWERPREP in your ETS account, and the Quant sections of one of them are the right first step. If you can’t spare two hours this week, do a 20-question mixed set from the official practice material instead. Either way, you’re collecting data, not a score, so don’t study for it.

When it’s done, sort every miss into one of the four buckets above and into one of four reasons: didn’t know the concept, knew it but took too long, made an arithmetic slip, or misread the question. The concept misses define your rebuild. The others define your drilling.

The six-week daily plan

The plan assumes 35 minutes a day, six days a week, with Sunday off or reserved for a full practice test if you’re also following the ten-week plan on this site. Every weekday session has the same shape: ten minutes reading one concept in the Math Review, twenty minutes of problems on that concept, five minutes writing up the misses in your error log. Saturday is a 60-minute timed mixed set from whatever you’ve covered so far.

Two adjustments make this plan yours rather than generic. First, if your diagnostic showed a bucket you already handle, cut that week to two days and give the time to your weakest bucket. Second, if arithmetic itself was the problem (fraction operations, negative numbers, decimal places), add a seventh week at the front and don’t apologize for it; everything else is built on it.

The 35 minutes matters more than the six weeks. Content you touch six days a week comes back; content you binge on Saturday and ignore until the next Saturday doesn’t, and that’s as true of math at 38 as it was at 16.

The error log is the plan

An error log is a plain spreadsheet or notebook with five columns: the date, where the question came from, the bucket, the reason it went wrong (the four reasons from the diagnostic), and one sentence on what you’d do differently. It takes five minutes a day. By the end of week three it’s the most useful document you own, because it shows you which two or three topics account for most of your misses, and those get the extra time in weeks five and six.

Reread it every Saturday before the timed set. Not casually.

A log also keeps you honest about careless errors. Adults tend to wave those off (“I knew that one”), but if a third of your misses are arithmetic slips, you don’t have a knowledge problem, you have a checking problem, and the fix is different: write every step, don’t skip the “what is the question asking” reread, and slow down by ten seconds on numeric entry.

Which concepts come back fast and which don’t

Some topics return within a week because you’ve used them since college without naming them. Percent change, averages, ratios, reading a bar chart, solving a single linear equation: anyone who has managed a budget or read a quarterly report has kept these alive, and the Math Review refreshes them in a single sitting.

Other topics don’t come back because they never fully arrived. Most adults learned exponent rules by memorizing them for a test and never understood why a negative exponent means a reciprocal or why a fractional exponent is a root, so the GRE’s habit of writing 8 as 2 to the third power to see whether you’ll notice catches them. Inequalities flip when you multiply by a negative, and nearly everyone who’s been away a decade forgets that once under time pressure. Combinations versus permutations trip up people who are otherwise strong. Coordinate geometry is pure memory for most adults and has to be rebuilt from slope upward.

Budget your attention accordingly. Give the fast topics one pass and move on; give the slow ones two sessions each and a line in the error log every time they reappear.

Rick’s note: The students I see who stall in Quant are almost never stalled on hard math. They’re stalled on one of about five things: exponent rules, the inequality flip, special right triangles, counting, and translating a word problem into an equation. If I had to guess your weak spots before your diagnostic, I’d guess those, and I’d usually be right on three of them.

Using the calculator without losing time

The on-screen calculator has the four operations, a square root key, a memory function and a button that transfers the display into a numeric-entry box. ETS provides it on every Quant question. It is not a graphing calculator and won’t do fractions, exponents beyond repeated multiplication or anything symbolic.

Use it for what it’s for: long division, awkward decimals, square roots of non-squares, and any multiplication where a slip would cost you the question. Don’t use it for 15 percent of 80 or 7 times 8, because clicking takes longer than knowing. The habit to build in weeks one and two is doing arithmetic on paper first and reaching for the calculator only when the numbers get ugly, which also keeps your number sense sharp enough to catch a calculator typo.

One more thing. The calculator follows order of operations, so 1 + 2 × 3 gives 7, not 9; adults who learned on cheaper calculators sometimes expect the other answer.

Keeping it from fading before test day

Content relearned in six weeks fades in six more if nothing holds it, and most adults finish the rebuild four to six weeks before their test date. The holding pattern is light: two mixed sets a week, 20 questions each, drawn from all four buckets, plus the weekly practice test if you’re following the ten-week plan on this site. Every miss still goes in the log, and any topic that misses twice in two weeks gets one 35-minute refresher from the Math Review.

Resist the urge to keep adding. After the six weeks, more content isn’t the lever; accuracy under time is, and that comes from the mixed sets, the quantitative comparison checks and the first-section discipline covered in the scoring guide here. A rusty adult who has rebuilt the four buckets and then drilled formats for a month is in better shape than a recent graduate who knows more math and has never seen a QC question.

Short, steady, logged. That holds.

What to do this week

1. Create your ETS account and open the free POWERPREP practice tests, which is where the diagnostic lives.
2. Take the two Quant sections of one POWERPREP test, untimed if you need to, and sort every miss by bucket and by reason.
3. Download or bookmark the ETS Math Review and read only the section headings, so the scope is fixed in your mind before you study anything.
4. Set up the five-column error log and put 35 minutes on your calendar for six weekdays, at the same time each day.
5. Start week one on Monday with integers and divisibility, even if arithmetic felt fine, because number properties hide inside half the test.