These are the easiest questions in GRE verbal sections. Here you are asked to pick up the most nearest word opposite in meaning to the given one.

Most of these questions depends highly on your vocabulary power. So if you know meaning of all words in the question you can answer it right away.. But the problems comes when you face a question with words you don't know.

READ ALL ANSWERS BEFORE JUMPING TO A CONCLUSION

Take any example of below question

RELUCTANT:

• relaxed
• eager
• tiresome
• brave
• unwilling

GRE verbal isn't that easy that you will get marks just by picking up an antonym.
the answer for above question is eager...

Relucatant means unwillingly doing or joining without interest
At first glance unwilling might pop into your mind but it is not the nearest opposite of the given words.

The right answer is eager which means doing something with interest where as reluctant means doing or participate without interest.

All gre questions will be like this.

There are many tricks up under their sleeves.

Some times they include synonyms in the answers. You have to remember that you are looking for ANTONYMS NOT SYNONYMS.

Some times there are questions that target the secondary meaning and uncommon use of the word.


AFFECTED:

• Disturbed
• Maladroit
• Solid
• Unadulterated
• Genuine

AFFECTED:- which means

• Influenced in a harmful way; impaired, harmed, or attacked, as by climate or disease.
• acted upon; influenced.

But when you see unadulterated just comes in your mind but it lacks some thing. Also none of the answers seems to be right antonym. Unadulterated means pure or without any impurities. But the right answer for above question is GENUINE. Affected gives meaning of an insincere or fake expression. So Genuine (original ) is the right answer here. These types of question are difficult to answer even if you know the meaning of all words in the question.

There are other ways to attack or tackle the GRE Antonym questions when you don't know the meaning.

Stripping off any prefixes or suffixes like "-ing," "un-," "pre-," "-in", "-able" and so forth you arrive at the root meaning of the word. Take example of the word like predisposition.


remove the pre suffix and you will end up with disposition.

pre- gives the meaning of before and the suffix -tion suggests that we are dealing with a noun. So just look of nouns in the answers so that you can eliminate other forms like verbs and adjectives.

disposition means dispose some thing.. or making your position before or previous inclination etc...

Now search for a noun that means not inclined in the answers.

One of the most effective way to know meaning of unknown words is etymology. Which means divining words into two or breaking into two

Ex: ominpotent..

omni + potent

omni is like in the word omniscient --- which means every where..

potent means --> potency or strength...

Together the word means strong everywhere or strong among all.

Word that starts with "De," "Dis," or "Anti" will almost certainly be negative
so look for words that seem to have positive meaning..

There are also word that have rythm going up like Elevate, Ascendancy, Lofty and these will be certainly positive and others have tone going down like Decline, Subjugate, Suborn, etc. and these words have negative meaning.

Also if you don't recognize the meaning of the word then put the word in context.
Try to think of a sentence or context which you have heard the word in and you can guess the meaning from that.

But before looking for an opposite word, think of an opposite meaning for the capitalized word. This can be useful and you can filter the choices quickly.

if you want more knowledge on etymology use Word Power Made Easy by Norman Lewis.

Anyway all the best for your exam.

Other Suggested Reading

How to tackle verbal antonyms
Gre Tips

Toefl is popular. You have many useful reading resources & books available for preparation of TOEFL IBT.

Kaplan's Toefl IBT prep Course
This course inlcludes
Includes:

• 4 practice tests on CD-ROM in iBT format
• Audio CD and transcripts of authentic-language conversations for listening comprehension
• 8 comprehensive chapters of reading, writing, listening, and speaking practice
• Hundreds of strategies for answering integrated skills questions

I found it very useful. You can record your answers for sample questions and listen to them later. Kaplan is one of the best recommended courses.




Barron's Toefl IBT Prep

We have other publisher BARRON's whose text books are popular. I found this particularly useful. The audio cd of barron has about 8 practice test. All of them are very good. I highly recommend buying this book.



The tips and hints given in this book are really good.

There are other resources which are by the ETS itself and some other institutes.

This section test your ability to read and understand /comprehend university level text or literature.
The reading section tests your skills like

• Reading to find information
• Basic comprehension
• Reading to learn

You have to read about 3-5 passages each 700 words long. Total time for this section is 60 to 100 minutes. In the Reading section, test takers can also click on Back at any time to return to the
previous question. You have to concentrate while reading these question (even though it is boring to read 3 or 5 lengthy passages). Don't Read all of the passage. Just scan for main points or gist. It is recommended that you first read the question and then look for answers in the passage. We are not going to increase our knowledge by reading these passages. We are there to answer questions. Remember that, so start reading the questions first and look for answers in the passage. There are other methods to get more score in reading section. Increasing your reading speed. Just search in google to increase your reading speed, you will be able to get a lot of material. Read novels & other materials you will improve your Vocab along with your reading speed.

Here are the items you have to take for your visa interview.

• I20
• Appointment letter
• Application
• Financial Statements
• College Transcripts & all academic documents
  
• Passport
• Financial affidavit
• SEVIS Receipt
• Pink application fee receipt
• Annual Income Certificates like (form 16 or tax forms of your parents)
• Property evaluation documents
• TOEFL and GRE score records
• Experience letter & offer letter of your Employers

Just check the site of American embassy(or the other countries embassy website ) for other information. Some embassies might require you to submit the documents 5 days before the appointment. Just follow their rules. Be confident and always maintain eye contact.

Toefl - Test of English as Foreign Language.
There are 4 sections in teofl IBT
Reading, Listening, Speaking and writing. Almost all of them are boring (honestly i was never tortured much any where). You have to sit there almost for about 5 hrs listening, reading more than 10 paragraphs and listening to more than 2 hrs of lectures. The scoring is on a scale of 0-120. More than 100 is considered a good score. Some universities requirement of toefl to get admission or require you to complete addition courses in english after admitting you. Sometimes reading may contain listening and other sections also contain integrated tasks which might require other skills. So the new toefl ibt is tougher the TOEFL CBT.

Take TOEFL IBT Overview Here

Section	Description	Testing Time	Questions	Score Scale
Reading	3-5 passages from academic texts; approximately 700 words long; 12-14 questions per passage.	60-100 minutes	36-70 questions	0-30
Listening	4-6 lectures, some with classroom discussion; each 3-5 minutes long; 6 questions each. 2-3 conversations; each 3 minutes long; 5 questions each.	60-90 minutes	34-51 questions	0-30
Break	-	10 minutes	-	-
Speaking	2 tasks to express an opinion on a familiar topic; 4 tasks to speak based on what is read and listened to.	20 minutes	6 tasks	0-4 points converted to 0-30 score scale
Writing	1 task to write based on what is read and listened to; 1 task to support an opinion on a topic.	50 minutes	2 tasks	0-5 points converted to 0-30 score scale
Total score	-	-	-	0-120

Vocabulary is the important  part of your GRE. Infact your performance in gre depends on your vocabulary. GRE exam has very difficult vocabulary reasoning section and is becoming more harder and harder. This articles gives you good tips on how to build your vocabulary. One sure hit way is to read more and more challenging material. If you read more challenging material you will encounter hard words & you will try to learn the meaning and remember the meaning since you will be using them in proper context. Reading word in their proper context is the most important thing. When you read a novel or a more challenging work the words are used in appropriate context and the vocabulary is difficult. I recommend reading works of Salman Rushdie. His works are wonderful and hard (difficult vocabulary for an international student). But start with "Word power made easy" by Norman Levis. It is a good start. You will enjoy this book. It has humor and nice concept to learn words. This book is based on etymology, which deals with origins of words. Barron's word list is a crash course. It is effective but i may not help you in getting 800/800 in verbal section. Use it if your GRE exam is in 2 or 3 months from today. Conclusion read more & more challenging material to improve your vocabulary (like practice makes man perfect)

Is the ranking really that important in determining which school to apply? Ranking is a game. A game for fame. If MIT has 9.8/10 and Harvad has 9.7/10 in US News ranking that does mean Harvard is inferior or low in standards when compared to MIT? How much you should consider school ranking for applying for university? There is a good article on how to choose or access the quality of the college. You must choose people than colleges or labs. People are who you will be interacting with and doing projects with. See their profiles carefully and their publications. How you research is being pursued in the university. Here are some stats by a Chinese university about worldwide ranking of universities. Here is the US News Grad School Ranking for year 1997.
Visit PHDS.org which is a very helpful site. At phds.org you can set your own criteria and get informations about schools and rank them.  This website also have very good resources on career develpment and advice for prospective graduate students on how to apply for unviersities.