Dweck found that children’s performance worsens if they always hear how smart they are. Kids who get too much praise are less likely to take risks, are highly sensitive to failure and are more likely to give up when faced with a challenge.

Smart people challenge everything. (You know who taught me that? A smart person.)

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Lecturing as a style doesn't work. Students learn by qualitative example.

Bogin detested it. “I didn’t want to be a slave,” he told me. “I didn’t want to be a person who is ordered and must obey the orders without any thinking. I didn’t consider myself to be a person who repeats texts without any criticism or thinking or any alternatives.”

Just as political dissidents fought the Soviet regime, so, too, did others oppose the educational system. Bogin was one of them. After studying English in college and serving in the army, he decided to become the kind of teacher he craved as a child. At a school in the Moscow suburbs in the late 1980s, he challenged pupils to challenge him — and everyone else. It was the height of perestroika under the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev.

* Never get a math problem wrong. Never. If you got it wrong (during a practice test), then re-do the entire test until you get everything right. Never rush yourself. Once you get in the habit of not making mistakes, it will persist during the test.

* Start practicing the vocab very early. Two years until you take the test? Perfect. Learn, specifically, the `Barrons' book. If you learn each word, you will get a near-800 on Verbal GRE, Guauranteed, and you will be instantly considered among the top applicants.

Of the math and verbal tests, only one can be gamed easily. It's the verbal. The math requires some knowledge, but the verbal is totally and absolutely game-able. I studied the Barron's book, and there was not a single word on the test that I did not see in that guide; it's a simple vocabulary test, and you have no excuse not to ace it. If you memorize every word in the book then you will get an 800, virtually guaranteed.