Hi all,
I'd started preparing 2 months back.I finished all the words in the Barron's word list as well as all the math exercises and gave the Barron's CAT .I was shocked at the results.I got 1100 (500 verbal 600 quant),which was no where near the score I was aiming for.
Then I revamped my preparation strategy
I made sure I knew, at the tip of my tongue, all the high frequency words in Barron's word list and did 15 of the 27 Big Book practise tests.I had also prepared my own word list containing about 850 words which I had learnt in the course of giving the Big Book tests as well as any fancy new word I had encountered.Also syvum.com had a lot of excellent practise questions.Its a site worth checking out!!!
As for math, I went through all the exercises in Barron's , did a lot of free practise tests -Petersons,Princeton Review,Kaplan,800 score.com,greguide......virtually any test I could find
The test experience was fine.As I had been to the test site 2 days before the exam,there was no tension regarding locating it!
Once I was there,I was at ease.They had friendly staff.All the formalities went fine.
I was seated in the test room and went through all the tutorials on how to use a mouse,how to click etc..much in vain!!!!
First came the analytical section.I completed both my issue and argument section just on time.
After the 10 minute break came the Verbal section.I did encounter some new words and I'd 3 RC's-25 line,35 line, 100 line ...I just finished my test with less than 10 seconds to spare.
After this came the math section which was again tougher than I'd expected and was getting progressively tougher.I'd finished both my 27th and 28 th question in the last minute..phew!!!!!!!!!
Then came an optional experimental section which I decided to give a miss!!
A prompt came up asking me whether I wanted to viw my score ...I clicked yes and Voila!!!!!!!!...I couldnt contain my joy...I completed the rest of the formaliities,selected the schools I wanted to apply to and came out of the centre rejoicing..
My Powerprep tests always fetched me scores of 1400 plus,but I never reached 1500.I'm just very happy to get the score I did!!!
Hope this was of some help guys..
All the best....Cheers!!!!

I just received my GRE scores and was happy to see I'd scored 6 on AWA. One of the other forum participants asked to see writing samples so I'm posting one of the practice essays I did here. Maybe you will find this helpful? Hope so!

ISSUE TOPIC
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"The media (books, film, music, television, for example) tend to create rather than reflect the values of a society."

For most who live in first-world countries, it is impossible to go through a given day without being inundated with messages through media. Marshall McLuhan argued in his seminal research that "The medium is the message," and examining the values that are propagated through media is an important one with implications for how societal values are formed. Does media create or reflect the values of a society? My thoughts are that it does both. The creators of media, the process by which media is consumed and the eventual output and success of media production seem to support this. I will attempt to delineate the argument in succession below.

When we examine this argument on whether media creates or reflects the values of society, perhaps a fruitful place to begin is to ask the question, "Who creates media?" Books are written by authors, music produced by musicians, television and movies from a cadre of script writers, newspapers by reporters - though this is but a small - and by no means exhaustive - sample of all the producers of media, it does indicate that media is made by people, and typically, people associated by organisations, themselves just clusters of more people. Inevitably, when we look at a artefact of media, we are looking at something created out of at least one human mind, which has been infused from birth with the beliefs, ideologies and values of a social and cultural context, which we can call "society." As such, media producers draw on their personal histories, which are fashioned and informed by and exist within society, to translate their ideas into artefacts for consumption by other people. Their books, films, music, television shows, newspaper articles, blog posts, Twitter updates and so forth transmit back into the societal milieu and - with luck - meet success to live on and influence more people. Thus, since media is created by people, and reflects their values, then is consumed by other people, thereby influencing their values, it both creates and reflects the values of society.

Next, we should look at the process by which values, beliefs, and ideas in media are able to live, to see if media reflects or create societal values. We can borrow Richard Dawkins' term "meme", introduced in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, to describe discrete chunks of cultural information that are disseminated through a society. The process by which memes propagate is similar to that of genes, in that they must compete with each other and be strong enough to gain cultural currency, to survive and possibly to mutate. Memes can be transmitted through media- and non-media-related channels. For the purpose of this discussion, we will focus on media channels. The memes in media produced by and reflecting the values of people must stand the test of their environment. Cultural consumers have the luxury to choose their patterns of media consumption - and in so doing, elect from their bevy of choices to accept or reject values they see in their media. The success of the media in question can be measured by the rate of adoption and propagation. If the media carrying these value-informed memes is widely accepted, it is propagated. One recent example is the internet YouTube video of Susan Boyle's appearance on Britain's Got Talent. Its success shows that a down-on-her-luck middle-aged woman who has an incredible singing voice can inspire people, and shows that it strikes a particularly profound chord, based on values held by a society.

Now that we've looked at who produces media, and how the media is transmitted, it's useful to address different types of specific media that demonstrate how media both reflects and creates the values of a society. One genre that richly illustrates this is US movies in the 1970s. The politically charged environment - a time of social unrest and dissastifaction giving rise not only to the modern feminist movement but also that of civil rights - producedmovies like Network and Taxi Driver, which both reflected and challenged the beliefs of their viewers. Similarly, we can look at plays written in the 1990s on gay rights, such as Angels in America and The Laramie Project, which examine themes of homosexuals in society and how society accepts them. Without the societal context for these media, they may not have come to be. At the same time, as earlier mentioned, the success of these projects suggests that audiences were receptive to taking on the questions that these media raised - including challenges to and affirmations of the values the societal holds.

Other proponents may argue that media creates values only, and does not reflect them, as media today are often produced by organisations with access to capital whose objective is turn a profit. However, this analysis would ignore that the widespread access to new technologies decentralises cultural and media production, so more and more people can create media that reflects their values. Also, the position that media only reflects values fails to address the consumption half of the media production cycle and its importance in shortlisting values and ideas that live on.

In summary, it's difficult to determine exactly how much media creates values versus how much it reflects them, but the idea that it does both seems to be a strong one, given how media is created in society - by people, for people, with creation and reflection of values as a complex process inherent in its production.

This is going to be kind of an intense description of what I did, but perhaps it will also help for you!

BEFORE THE EXAM

1. Group the prompts

To prepare, I first looked through the entire list of topics and categorised them myself into about 9-10 different categories (i.e., politics & history, technology, learning & education, moral philosophy, etc.). That process helped me boil down the issue pool into something my mind could reasonably deal with! Also, I found it really helpful to do it myself instead of just using someone else's groupings, because thinking through the issues helped me understand my own way of thinking. (I'm happy to share my excel file though, if anyone wants it.)

2. Identify as many perspectives on the issue as you can

As I read through them I asked myself what my position those topics were, in general and specifically, and I tried to think about the issue prompts in relation to each other. Often, I found overlap in that a few may provide different perspectives on each other, which helps you think outside of what conclusions you might otherwise reach. I also tried to brainstorm all the different ways of thinking about the issue to extend this further. It's important that you be generous when you do this: make the "opposite" positions intelligent, not ridiculous, as it will do you no favours to argue a strawman.

3. Challenge the assumptions

Then, I imagined having conversations with friends who took all those different positions about these things. I asked myself what I might be thinking and how I might respond. Where would we find common ground? Where would we disagree? What assumptions would the both the agreements and disagreements be based on? How might these be bolstered or undermined? How exactly would these link back to the original issue, i.e., why/how would these points be relevant?

4. Sort out your thoughts

Grade school English was good for many things. Key to the GRE was mind maps. While you won't have enough time to actually make a mind map, you can do as many as you like when you're just preparing.

5. Refresh what already you know

I reviewed my notes from college for "academic" references, flipped through old magazines (The Economist, Harper's, Wired, Monocle) for contemporary ones, and picked up a few really simple children's books on various topics (history, science, art) to remind myself of key names and dates. I also took someone's really good advice on this forum to memorise flexible examples and flesh them out with facts - when certain books were published, dates of revolutions, that kind of thing.

DURING THE EXAM

1. Write the body first, then the conclusion, then the intro

This will help you get your main points down and then see where your argument is going. I think this was the single most useful piece of advice I got on the AWA, because one of my problems is to get too hung up on tweaking the argument till it's "just right" - but the GRE AWA doesn't ask for "just right", so don't kill yourself. Instead, aim for sufficiently cogent. It's not a thesis. Just get in there, say your piece, bookend your position with some intro and conclusion, and get out.

2. Never forget the prompt

Eyes on the prize: I figured that I needed to keep focused on exactly what the prompt was saying, or more specifically, what I wanted it to say. I didn't want to leave anything to chance, I wanted to lead the reader through exactly how I understood it, so I spent time (and words) describing how I'd interpreted the prompt itself.

3. Write your face off

Type fast. As fast as you possibly can. Even when the stuff doesn't seem to make sense. Long essays are rewarded, for better or for worse, I figured. In the times I found myself veering off course, I would check myself again against the issue prompt. How was my current line of reasoning directly related to the prompt? How was it strengthening my current argument? How might someone who disagreed with me challenge that, and how would I counter them? These were the things I would try to make more explicit.

That's all I can think of for now, but I'll post more if they come to mind.