I knew all these in HS, but I did poorly on the SAT, scoring a scant 580 on the verbal portion. However, much later, I considered going on for my doctorate and thought it would be good to take a practice GRE. At that time, I got a 790 on the verbal. I'm not sure if I was aware of AWAD at the time. I think studying vocabulary for it's own sake is a worthwhile thing or else I wouldn't be here - but I suspect most people will the same problem I have which is that I don't remember words unless I use them or I see them used over and over.
The big difference between me at 18 and me at 30-something was not studying lists of words (which I'm not knocking, btw), but the fact that I'd expanded my reading. I used to only read comic books, science books, and sf. It turns out that a crap load of those GRE words are words that you see time and again in classic and modern literature.
I think I might have done even worse on my SAT had I not had two years of Latin and a pretty good HS etymology course behind me.
Anyway, I think the very best way to prepare for the GRE is to take a sample (real)test first. Other than that, the best way to practice for the verbal portion is to have a program reading widely - well before you take the actual test.
If, otoh, someone is reduced to memorizing lists of words, a few hints:
1. Have practical goals.
Don't say "I'm going to do 100 new words a day" or even 20 because you wont keep to that schedule.
2. Take practice tests - one a week, if you can manage it.
There are books that contain actual tests from which, if you are scrupulous, you can derive a very good sense of what the real test will entail.
3. Find authoritative lists of these words and try to prioritize the list.
4. Use the words that you are learning.
Understand them and make a habit of using them in your conversations. It will seem pretentious to the people around you, but you have to get into that habit, if you want to expand your vocabulary.
5. Don't just memorize a word and never look at it again.
Each time you practice, make it a cumulative practice.
6. Make flash cards. (Using the available wordlists, it would be an extremely trivial program to write a text based program that would take a dictionary and then test you - assuming the dictionary were in a format that was readily consumable.)
You have mentioned very good tips! Here's a website
http://www.grevocabulary.org which also has very useful tips and info to get a good verbal score in GRE
