GRE
The Graduate Record Examination (GRE) is a standardized Educational Testing Service (ETS) test. It is used to determine the applicant’s preparedness for graduate school. The GRE is used as a benchmark to compare students between graduate and business schools. GRE scores are considered valid for five years, but most colleges consider only scores obtained in the last three years.
There are two types of GRE tests: the general GRE and the subject-specific GRE. The GRE General Test is a measure of a person’s basic academic skills, and the scores are accepted by many graduate, business, and law schools. On the other hand, the GRE Subject Test is more technical and is required by some colleges for some courses.
The GRE General Test can be taken up to five times in a calendar year, but there has to be at least 21-day gap between two tests.
The GRE exam pattern comprises three primary sections: The three parts are Analytical Writing, Verbal Reasoning, and Quantitative Reasoning.
- Analytical Writing: This section assesses critical thinking skills, the ability to articulate ideas, and the skills to explain complex concepts.
- Verbal Reasoning: This section tests the candidate’s capacity to read and understand written text. It involves the comprehension of information from the material and the ability to find relationships between words, concepts, and parts of a sentence.
- Quantitative Reasoning:This section evaluates simple addition and subtraction and checks the understanding of simple concepts in algebra, arithmetic, geometry, and modern math problems. It also assesses skills in data analysis.
| Sections | Number of Questions / Score range | Allotted Time |
| Analytical Writing (One section with two separately timed tasks) | One “Analyze an Issue” task and one “Analyze an Argument” task [Score: 0 – 6, in half point increments] |
30 minutes per task |
| Verbal Reasoning (Two sections) | 20 questions per section [Score: 130 – 170 in total] |
30 minutes per section |
| Quantitative Reasoning(Two sections) | 20 questions per section [Score: 130 – 170 in total] |
30 minutes per section |
| Un-scored* | Varies | Varies |
| Research* | Varies | Varies |
The GRE may contain an unscored section that is not considered in the test taker’s score and can be located in any position after the Analytical Writing section. The questions in this section are experimental and are being tried out for possible use in future tests or to ensure comparability with scores from earlier editions.
Furthermore, an identified research section, which does not contribute to the score, may replace the unscored section and is always the last section of the test. The questions in the research section are intended for ETS research only.
The GRE is a computer-adaptive test; this means that the difficulty level of the second section for each subject depends on the performance of the test taker in the first section of that particular subject. For example, if a test taker does well in the first part of the test, they will be given a more challenging second part of the test, thus giving them access to higher scores. On the other hand, if fewer questions are answered correctly in the first section, the second section will be more accessible, with the scoring potential limited to a lower level.