GRE Prep: Tutoring, Courses, and Study Plans

Vince was fantastic in helping me build skills for the verbal text completion and reading comprehension sections of the GRE. He is an amazing tutor — always patient and encouraging. It is incredibly helpful to have someone as a tutor that really cares about your goals and is dedicated to helping you work through specific struggles. Vince certainly embodies that. I really appreciated the time he spent providing specific lessons that helped me build skills in areas where I thought I could most improve. In particular, I spent a lot of time practicing reading comprehension, and in working with Vince, I really improved in this area and ultimately excelled on test day. Many thanks, Vince!

This was the best tutoring program that I could have gotten for the GRE. I got the basic plan and 1 one on one tutoring session. Vince made sure I was on track every week, and honestly the basic plan made it seem like i had a private tutor. I sent him weekly updates and he would give me a detailed study plan based on how I was doing the previous week and it worked perfectly to get my target score. I am a pretty anxious test taker and he scheduled a call with me two days before my exam to calm my nerves. I honestly couldn’t think of a better test prep program!!!

Did a session with Blake Jensen. He was very helpful in breaking down techniques for approaching specific problems that had been creating challenges. Would recommend him for guidance on navigating the GRE math section.

Vince's guidance during my preparation directly led to my score increasing a lot over the few months I spent preparing for the GRE. The GRE has a lot of material that I had not looked at since high school. Using Vince's study plan reinforced these concepts for me. On top of this Vince was able to walk me through testing strategies, that I believe maximized my score on the exam!

My experience working with Vince was extremely positive, he is a fantastic tutor and I'd recommend him to people of all ages/levels. I used Vince as a GRE tutor and was blown away by how helpful he was throughout our 3-4 months working together. He is very organized, gives clear guidance, and provides the perfect amount of structure within his study plans / follow-ups. Vince's focus on fundamentals/content first and test strategy second worked really well for me, I felt very prepared taking the test. He also helped me stay positive and remain confident in myself when practice test scores were wavering. Lastly, I appreciated his test-taking tips and mental strategies as I would probably have overlooked these details on my own. I achieved my target score on the first test I took after working with Vince and he played a big role in this! Highly recommend using him.

My first foray with the GRE was four years ago, but I decided to re-take the exam this past year to apply for PhD programs and hopefully, score higher to strengthen my application. Knowing I had little capacity to organize a self-directed study, I contacted Vince. We had a great initial conversation and from there, Vince created a personalized plan for me. For the next 3 months, we would meet and work on problems and troubleshoot, targeting the areas I needed to strengthen. When I would fail to adhere to that week’s plan, Vince would graciously adapt the plan so that I could catch up and correct course. If you ask me what distinguishes a good teacher from a great one, I would point to Vince Kotchian as the example. Vince is an active listener, adaptable, patient, extremely prepared and engaged. He has everything you would want and need in a great tutor. The result was that I got the ambitious score I had set out to achieve (a significant improvement from my score four years ago!!) and was admitted to my dream PhD program. If you're hesitating to work with Vince, don't!

We enlisted Vince's services for our son's GRE prep . Since he already came from a strong mathematical background, Vince mainly focused on the Verbal part and some on the Writing section. But we appreciated that although Vince did not work on the quant part, he still recommended resources to help him acclimate to the type of questions he would face in the quant section. Vince was definitely a professional, and gave out very structured homework and personalized lesson plan. He had a lot of resources, information, and strategies to help in the verbal section. He was patient and cared about our son's progress. All in all, we were pleased with his scores and happy to have worked with Vince.

Vince is an unbelievable resource for GRE prep. He was plenty of resources to ensure you have a good foundation. I used Vince after using Magoosh for 3-months and scoring below my goal on the GRE. After 6-weeks and only 6 hrs of 1-on-1 time, Vince was able to help me raise my score by 6 points (3 in each section).

I can speak to Vince's value add in regards to the GRE. After 12-weeks of self-study on a popular GRE program, I felt that I was not going to reach my goal score of 330. I decided to give myself the edge and the multi-point bump I would need; I required one on one tutoring and a customized study plan. Over five weeks, I worked with Vince for 4 or 5 tutoring sessions and did 2-3 hours of a customized study plan every day. I took my first official GRE (at-home) at the end of the fifth week with Vince, expecting to have to retake it at least once. I got a 169V, 164Q and 5.5 AWA, blowing my goal out of the water. I give great credit to my work with Vince for this and could not be happier that I am done with this beast of a test. Highly, highly recommend Vince's test prep!

When I came to Vince, I had already taken the GRE twice after self-studying and leveraging gregmat. My score was not where I wanted it to be, but I felt I could still improve it with a different way of studying. With the help of the customized study plan, discord discussions, and having someone else invested in my success, I was able to raise my score 8 points in 2 months. I don't have people in my network to discuss/study with, so I really took advantage of Vince's willingness to discuss on the discord channel. It was invaluable to work with someone in this way without having to pay the high costs of private tutoring.

I went to Vince after several months of GRE preparation. My score had plateaued and I was having a hard time with RC passages. I would often find myself completely lost in some of the harder passages and not know how to quickly and confidently eliminate answer choices. I remember blowing through a couple of passages and guessing wildly. But Vince showed me how to figure out the main idea and efficiently eliminate answers. We discussed several strategies over the course of our private tutoring sessions and each time he was extremely patient with me even when I had no clue how to approach the problem. He encouraged me to attack the passage using different strategies and even when I was frustrated he didn't give up on me. He's great at identifying and zeroing in on your weakness and helping you see some ETS traps. Thanks to him, I scored a 165 in Verbal! Vince really knows his stuff, don't hesitate to reach out to him if you're struggling. Talking through RC questions at length with Vince always helps clarify your thinking and solidify your concepts.

Bumped my GRE scores from the ~160 range to the >165 range. Vince was invested in my success and taught me in such a way that did not feel in any way patronizing, contrary to some of my other test prep experiences. I would strongly recommend that anyone looking to take the GRE (and probably any other test, for that matter) work with Vince.

I am from a Mexican small city, so the idea of standarized tests was very new to me. My first mock I remember I scored 142V in the verbal section. Which is 17th percentile (very low to any university). Then, doing my research I found Vince's method. He has a very logical and simple approach for the test. For vocab, I used his super friendly mnemonic's app along with his instagram page with daily quizes. Then, I suscribed to his verbal precision course which has a vast array of very easy to manage techniques and tools for the verbal section. Yesterday I received my official scores and now I am in 79th percentile and I scored very decent in my AWA 4, which is sufficient for getting me to grad school. My grammar is not perfect, my logical thinking is not perfect either but Vince's prep was definitely perfect for me. Thank you Vince!

Vince was very helpful throughout the entire GRE studying process! In our first meeting, we discussed my short timeline and my score goals. Within the day he formed a detailed outline of my tasks for the week. We then met weekly to follow up on the tasks and go over specific questions. After each meeting I had a list of tasks to do for the following week. In the end I was very happy with my score! Update: I applied to JD / MPH programs for the 2021-2022 cycle. I was accepted to Columbia MPH, Johns Hopkins MPH, BU JD / MPH, and Harvard JD. I have decided to attend Harvard Law and will apply to the MPH with the same GRE score that I worked with Vince towards!

I opted for 1:1 tutoring and had a consultation with Vince who suggested Blake Jensen as the best tutor for my goal, which was to increase my quant score. I really wanted someone who could help me identify my weaknesses and mitigate them. I had taken the GRE twice before but my quant score had plateaued, despite studying and working with another tutor (who was not from VKTP). Having used another tutoring service prior, I can definitely say that Blake's explanations were much clearer and his methods much more effective. He didn't just show me how to solve individual problems, but instead taught me the broader concepts and tools that would allow me to tackle a variety of problems. He has in-depth familiarity with all of the test prep material as well, which was really beneficial when it came to crafting a study plan. After studying with Blake, I was able to increase my quant score to above a 160 and get the score I wanted for my programs. Definitely recommend!