in this video i'm going to share some tips and advice to self-study for the ged so first you need to know that there are four different sections on the ged test one section is the reasoning through language arts or also called rla this is a 150-minute test there's three different parts to it and one of those parts is a 45-minute essay now the essay is nothing to stress out about because technically you could get a zero on it you could still pass the uh rla section if you do well in the multiple choice and there's a lot of videos i have on the essay that i'll link to down below to help you with that um but for rla you should know that there are three different topics here one of them is reading for meaning another topic is identifying and creating arguments and also you'll have grammar and language now in addition to the rla there's also a social study section which is a 70-minute test and there's only one part it's mainly reading comprehension and looking at graphs and tables so things like reading passages and answering questions and for the social studies test you will be able to bring the calculator there may be some basic calculation questions on it but it's mainly reading comprehension so there's also a science section which is a 90-minute test and for science you'll have just one section and you can bring a calculator to that and if you can't bring a calculator with you because you don't have one there'll be a calculator provided for you on screen at the testing center and so for the science section um there's no essay for science anymore so if you have an older textbook where it talks about writing for science don't worry about that that's discontinued um the three topics for science are reading for meaning designing and interpreting science experiments and using numbers and graphics in science there's also a math section the math section is 115 minutes long and there's a formula sheet so for the majority of formulas you're not going to have to memorize them so don't worry too much about that there's two parts to the math there's no calculator portion which is very brief it's only a handful of questions so you will be able to use your calculator for the most of the math section now the specific details about the test sections can change sometimes like the the amount of time and like specific details things like those so um depending on when you're watching this video if things change just please check before you take your test i'm not anticipating there's going to be any major changes to the ged anytime soon but just know that they do change things up every now and then now the hardest section for most people tends to be the math section and the second hardest tends to be the rla but that being said everybody's different and some people do find social studies or science to be the hardest so just something to keep in mind here and as a quick tip here know that you don't have to take all the ged sections at once you can schedule each test separately which i would recommend just to give you a little bit more breathing room in between them but some people do like to schedule multiple tests in one day and just bang them out you have to do what's going to work for you now there's no right or wrong order to take the test sections in some people wonder which one they should start with sections or just focus on one at a time that's also up to you but i do have a kind of a method here and that you can kind of use to give yourself some guidance to help you pick the hardest uh to help you pick which section you should start with and so the way it works is i call this the champions combo just to give it a fun name here to go along with test prep champions my channel here but you're going to pick out your hardest subject so just for example let's say that's math for you and you're also going to pick out your easiest subject so just for example let's say that that social studies for you right so you pick the hardest one and the easiest now you're going to focus most of your study time on the easy one right that way you get some momentum going you get some confidence going so i just gave you 80 um focused 80 percent of your time on the easiest subject um and 20 on the hardest subject but it could really be like 90 on the easiest and 10 on the hardest um however you want to split it up but the point here is you know i want you to if you follow this method here pick the easiest ones spend most of your time on that but just spend a little bit of time on the math too or whatever the hardest one happens to be for you and so the point here is that eventually you're going to be able to pass social studies so you'll get that out of the way then you pick your second easiest section so let's say for you that's science so you'd be doing 80 of your time on studying for the science and then a little bit of time here and there on the math right then eventually you get the science done then you do the same thing with your third easiest so the next would be the rla focus 80 percent of your study time on that just do a little bit of math here and there and then eventually you'll pass the rla and the idea here is that um eventually you're going to pass all three of the other sections leaving you just with your hardest subject but by the time you've gotten to the point where you want to focus just on your hardest subject you've already dabbled in math so much that you'll have a strong foundation and hopefully it won't take that much longer to finish the math section right or whatever your hardest happens to be now this might not work for you but this is just a suggestion here for one way that you can go about picking which sections to start with so another question that a lot of people have revolves around textbooks so textbooks for the ged usually cost between twenty to thirty dollars maybe a little less maybe a little more but you shouldn't have to spend too much more than thirty dollars um now note that you absolutely don't have to buy a textbook you don't need a textbook because there's enough information out there for free just on my channel alone let alone other ged channels and other advice out there on youtube and on the internet um so you don't need to buy textbooks so if you're really hurting for cash or if it's a hardship you can skip it um but that being said i do highly recommend buying a textbook if you can afford one i think that buying a textbook will help you give you more guidance it'll give you more structure there's definitely tons of practice problems in most textbooks so there's definitely advantages you'll probably pass faster and get a higher score but then again if you can't afford it don't worry about it there is enough info out there for free that you can definitely still pass now the next question people often ask would be which textbook is best to pick from and for this i highly recommend um another uh another teacher out there he this is a ged teacher named david cohen he has a channel on youtube here and i'll link to it down below but he did a video on this where he called it the best and worst ged books and really if you haven't heard of his channel i highly recommend subscribing and going back through his older videos and watching them because i think he's one of the best channels um if not the best channel that i've seen out there among the ged channels that i watch from time to time i think his is one of the best his information is great so check out his stuff but basically he says in his video that um some of his best recommendations are uh the paxon textbook and then also princeton review and kaplan now for those who have seen my videos before um you'll know that i generally do recommend kaplan to people and that's because that's what i've had the most experience using um myself especially when i was doing a lot of tutoring in person and that also seems to be one of the most popular options so know that there's nothing wrong with kaplan it will get the job done for you but that being said david basically says in his video on different textbooks that uh he thinks that princeton reviews practice problems are more similar to the real test than kaplans and now i don't have that much experience with princeton reviews so i can't really speak to which is better here but you know i mean david has uh tons of experience so um i'd be the last person to argue uh with his opinion on that so um princeton review might actually be um a better option for you than kaplan so um but at the end of the day you know any of these textbooks will get the job done for you there's other textbooks out there too besides princeton review and kaplan so really most published textbooks will work for you just some might be a better fit for others but shop around and see what kind of deal you can come up with and pick out which one's best for you um now some people also wonder which textbook is the best year to buy and the bottom line is that i do recommend getting the latest edition of the textbook if possible so if you're going to the store tomorrow i would pick out 2022 or whatever year you happen to be watching this video 2023 2024 you know 2050 okay that's a joke you probably won't be watching this in 2050 hopefully you'll have the ged by then but um you get the point here i would get the latest edition just because i think that um they do make small changes and the ged service makes minor updates here and there so that's why i would try to get the latest if you can but know that any book published after 2014 is going to be just fine it'll be basically the same one difference is some of the older textbooks have a science essay in it um which again i guess that earlier the science was discontinued so there's some minor things like that but um for the most part if you already have an older textbook as long as it's from 2014 or later you don't need to buy a new one so i now want to present to you a little model here that i came up with and again um you know i called up the champions model here just to go along with test prep champions my channel here have a little fun um and this model that i kind of made up here is or i put it together here um it's just to give you kind of a strategy for how to approach the material so the first step in your self-studying is always going to be to learn the material now when you learn the material you'll just you're basically just taking the information in and you do this through reading your textbook or watching youtube videos or if you're doing a class or something like that that's another way of learning the material um but this is where a lot of people get stuck a lot of students have a stumbling block in that they focus just on learning passively just by watching videos and just by reading and they don't do nearly enough actual doing so the second step here is to test yourself okay and this is really the most important step and the people who pass the fastest from my experience or those that spend more time testing themselves alright so you know the idea here is that if you just watch a ged video it's easy to sit there and think okay i can follow this i understand this um but you don't really know if you understand it until you test yourself on it right so that's why you always always always need to test yourself so if you're watching my videos i often tell people to pause the video and i'll give you practice problems to try so that's an example of testing yourself it could also be if you're using a book you would read a chapter let's say you read a lesson on fractions then there's practice problems right there in the book and you go through some of them and often what happens is you read the chapter you think you understand it then you go to try the problems and you realize that you're having trouble and you're stuck and so that's why i have this arrow here because that's often going to happen you know you think you understand it you test yourself you realize no i actually don't understand this so you go back and reread that chapter or at least reread the part of the chapter that you're stuck on or you go back and you re-watch the video or you find another video on that same topic but anyway what i want you to do is focus on testing yourself until you know that you can get problems right on a certain topic then you can move on to the next phase now the next phase here is repetition um for most people the first time you learn something you're probably not going to remember it for too long which is why repetition is very important here so i really recommend taking notes as you study um and then just review your notes every few days or once a week or as much as you need to um for some topics if you really focus and you really put a lot of effort into it um if you do a good job with your learning phase and if you do a good job with testing yourself you probably won't need to do that much repetition which is why testing yourself is such a powerful method to learn the material because it's going to help you just understand it better and retain it longer so you won't need to do as many reps with that to uh to really remember it if you've done a good job with the first two phases but just note that after you've proven to yourself that you understand something by testing yourself you'll want to come back to it from time to time and just keep yourself fresh on it so you don't get too rusty all right and so after all of that um you keep this up keep going with the first three steps until you are ready to reach your goal score all right now you might be wondering but how does the scoring actually work so let me tell you there's three levels of scoring on the ged test and you need to score at least the 145 to pass each subject um that would be just a passing score but also if you score higher than that you score within the 165 to 174 range this is what's called the college ready range and depending on which school you want to go to if you want to go to college community college or a four-year school or whatever you want to do you might be able to be exempt from certain placement tests if you score on this range here and then the third range is the college ready plus credit score which would be scores between 175 to 200. now note that scores that are this high are relatively rare especially a perfect score like a 200 those are very very rare very few people do that now if that's your goal and you want to aim for a score that's this high then definitely go for it you never know what you can do if you work hard you might surprise yourself but i just want to be clear that it is very difficult so you know don't feel bad if you don't feel bad if you aren't able to get up into this range but anyway um depending on where you want to go to college you might even be able to earn some college credits early just for your high score if you do score in this range so just something to keep in mind now if you don't score in the college ready range don't worry about it because actually at most colleges um you're not required to do this most colleges and by that i mean the vast majority of them as far as i know do not require um college-ready scores so if you just pass the ged um with the basic score and score the first level you're still going to be able to get into college at at least the majority of school so don't worry about that so another common question people often have is do i have to know everything in a textbook or everything on all of your videos or everything on youtube to pass and the answer is no you do not have to know everything just to pass um but that being said if you're aiming for a very high score like if you're aiming for one of these college ready scores or especially if you want to aim for a college ready plus credit score then uh just to be safe then you do want to try to know everything i mean i know that might not be what you want to hear but um to get a very high score then yes you would want to probably try to learn every little thing in the textbook it's going to take you some time but that's why those scores are so hard to get now if you're just aiming to pass though i definitely recommend you overkill your studying by that i mean you want to get to the point with you're studying that you're pretty sure you could pass and then keep going just do a little bit more maybe do a lot more just to give you that extra confidence boost and give you that little cushion there um so that you'll be extra confident going into your test so another common question is how can i know when i'm ready to take the test well the best way to do that is to take an official ged ready practice test these are the best way to gauge if you're likely to pass or not and i just want to say here that you know i have no reason for recommending this i don't work for the company i don't get paid by the testing service so i don't have any reason to recommend this i'm just um telling you guys honestly what my opinion here is and what my experience and in stories i've heard from many test takers um shows that these tests are the best way to tell if you're likely to pass it's going to give you a score approximation um which will basically it's going to do what it says it's going to tell you if you're likely to pass or not and there's no guarantee but if you get a likely to pass score and you're feeling confident you're probably in a good place to go take the test okay um so these used to be six dollars each um i believe they've now raised them to 6.99 each um and so that can get expensive i do recommend taking one at least one for each ged section and i strongly recommend doing this if you could afford to do so now i know 699 for one section doesn't sound like a lot but it does add up if you're doing that for each section um and especially if you're taking more than one practice test where some people do take uh several practice tests in fact for the harder sections like the math it's not uncommon to take two or three um some people do take five or six um most people probably don't take that many but i do know that some people take tons of practice tests so um on average probably two or three is pretty typical but um some people do one some people don't do any and they still pass but i really do believe that these are your best bet and so you know if you're really if you're um in a situation where it's a hardship for you to buy these tests then don't worry about that there are other options out there i do have practice tests and practice quizzes on my channel that have been helpful to people there's other free information out there too like david cohen's channel that i already mentioned earlier in this video so um you can still pass um for free based off of the practice test here on youtube um but they can't approximate your score for you the way the official test can so that's why i strongly recommend doing those but if cost is an issue for you then it's not the end of the world um yeah so moving forward here um i just want you also to know that the tests are randomized so if you have a friend or you know someone that passed the ged and they tell you what was on their test they may have gotten a different version of the test than you um so it's good to listen to everybody's experience and good to hear what everyone has to say but um you know if someone tells you that refractions or there were slow questions or whatever on their section doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to have the same questions on your test all right nobody can predict exactly which topics you're going to get because they're randomized right and there's three different versions of each test and like i said it's randomized so you don't know which version you're going to get um so like i said your test version is probably going to be different from other people but note that here that like i said there's only three different versions of each test so if you felt the test three times you will eventually be retaking one of the same tests okay so this brings me to an important point here which um is a question a lot of people have what typically happens if i fail a section of the ged so first let me just give you a little disclaimer here you know i'm going to share generally what's going to happen um generally what happens if you fail a section here but retake policies vary by location and testing center they do change from time to time so unfortunately i don't know and i can't tell you what the policies are going to be in each location and for every single situation so i'm going to give you a basic overview here of what generally happens um and if that doesn't answer your question about what happens in your situation or in your state then please contact the ged testing services to confirm the policies in your area and situation right um you can comment down below maybe somebody else will live in your state or maybe someone else will know the answer but pretty much everything i know about the retake policies i'm including here in this video so you're welcome to ask down below but unfortunately i probably won't know the answer to some of these questions so that's why i would recommend asking the testing service so basically here goes typically if you don't pass on your first try you're going to get two retakes without a waiting period now typically if you fail on your third try what happens is you're going to have a 60-day waiting period to try again so like i said there's three different versions of the test if you fail three times you will eventually be retaking one of those same um tests that you already took but you have to wait 60 days so you may not remember everything from so long ago so you know trying to remember everything from your first three attempts you know it might not be that helpful because you have 60 days to wait but just know that you will be taking one of those same tests again unless they make a change to the policy but that's what it is currently um and also know that as far as cost goes for a ged testing service um know that their fees for your second and third try are going to be waived um but again that's going to vary by state and testing center which is you know like i said i can't really tell you exactly what's going to happen in your state or at the testing center you're going to but they do waive the fee for your second and third try and after your third try you're gonna have to pay the full amount again for your fourth try um but then the next two tries after that are going to be discounted all right so uh but there's a stipulation here in order to get that discount you have to retake within one year of paying the original price all right so like i said here i'm just the messenger i just want to relay this information to help guide you along the way but i really recommend for further questions on the retake policies and just in general to confirm the policies at your location and for your situation just ask the ged testing service um that's going to be your best source so i i just as a general thing here um some people make mistakes with their note taking um they kind of take an all or none approach where they think they have to go all in and write down everything in their books and videos or they don't take any notes um the spy balance is really key um and so definitely when you're taking notes try to capture the big ideas and insights don't worry too much about the facts and definitely another reason why i recommend practice tests if you can is because it's going to help you understand how much detail you have to write down when you take your notes so speaking of practice tests you can try them out right now on my channel um you can click the video link and you can try those out but thank you for watching hope this video was helpful and good luck to you i wish you the best of luck with your studying