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The computer-based General Test is composed of Verbal Reasoning, Quantitative Reasoning and Analytical Writing sections. In addition, one unidentified unscored section may be included, and this section can appear in any position in the test after the Analytical Writing Section. Questions in the unscored section are being tested for possible use in future tests, and answers will not count toward your scores.

Total testing time is up to three hours, not including the research section. The directions at the beginning of each section specify the total number of questions in the section and the time allowed for the section.

The Analytical Writing section is always first. For the Issue task, two topics will be presented and you will choose one. The Argument task does not present a choice of topics; instead, one topic will be presented.

The Verbal and Quantitative sections may appear in any order, including an unidentified unscored section. Treat each section presented during your test as if it counts.

Typical Computer-Based GRE® General Test

* For the Issue task, two essay topics are presented and you choose one. The Argument task does not present a choice of topics; instead one topic is presented.
** An unidentified unscored section may be included and may appear in any order after the Analytical Writing section. It is not counted as part of your score.
*** An identified research section that is not scored may be included, and it is always at the end of the test.

Paper-Based General Test Content and Structure

The paper-based General Test is composed of Verbal Reasoning, Quantitative Reasoning and Analytical Writing sections. In addition, one unidentified unscored section may be included, and this section can appear in any position in the test after the Analytical Writing Section. Questions in the unscored section are being tested for possible use in future tests, and answers will not count toward your scores.

Total testing time is up to 3 3/4 hours. The directions at the beginning of each section specify the total number of questions in the section and the time allowed for the section.

The Verbal and Quantitative sections may appear in any order, including an unidentified Verbal or Quantitative unscored section. Treat each section presented during your test as if it counts.

Typical Paper-Based General Test

*For the Issue task, two essay topics will be presented and you will choose one. The Argument task does not present a choice of topics; instead, one topic will be presented.
** An unidentified unscored section may be included and may appear in any order after the Analytical Writing section. It is not counted as part of your score.

Modified Versions of Verbal and Quantitative Questions

The test you take may include questions that are modified versions of published questions or of questions you have already seen on an earlier section of the test. Some modifications are substantial; others are less apparent.

Thus, even if a question appears to be similar to a question you have already seen, it may in fact be a different question and may also have a different correct answer. You can be assured of doing your best on the test you take by paying careful attention to the wording of each question as it appears in your test.

PREPERATION

Because the GRE is a timed test, there are a few key things that you should remember to help maximize your score.

On the computer-adaptive test, your score is based on the number of questions you get right, the difficulty of the questions you get right, and the NUMBER of questions you answer. This means that you always want to make sure that you answer every question on every section. The test is meant to be tough, and so it is assumed that most people will not have as much time as they hope on each question. As a rule, get into the habit of keeping track of time, and in the last minute, if you have more than a few questions left, you'll want to guess to make sure that you answer all of the questions.

The computer-adaptive test uses the first third or so of each section to make coarse adjustments to your score, and your performance on the latter two-thirds of each section is used to finely adjust your score. Therefore it's to your advantage to make sure that you spend a little bit more time on the first third of each section. For example, the first question in each section is always worth 70 or 80 points, and the last question is worth no more than 10, so you'll want to make sure that you get the first questions right because those questions affect your score the most.

Most importantly, don't panic. The test is supposed to be hard, so keep that in mind. Always keep track of the time that you have left, and be sure be conscious of how much time you spend on each question -- Never spend more than 2 minutes on a question.

How GRE is Scored

On the computer-adaptive GRE general test, the number of questions that you answer correctly is adjusted according to the difficulty of the questions that you are given. The staistical properties of the questions, your performance on each question, and the number of questions that you answered are all factors that are used to compute your score. Therefore, two students who correctly answer the same number of questions may receive different scores that reflect the difficulty of the questions that were answered correctly. The scoring process for the paper-based test is similar.

For the computer-adaptive GRE general test, the type and difficulty of each question that you are presented is based on the difficulty of the questions that you have answered correctly, your progress so far, the types of questions that you have seen, and the coverage of content. Remember that you shouldn't try to guess if a question is difficult or hard; just do you best to answer each question that you are given, knowing that you cannot proceed until you answer the question that you are presented.

For the paper-based GRE general test, the number of questions that you answer correctly is computed as the raw score. Your raw score is then sclaed to your final score by a process that is called equating. Your final score is adjusted to account for differences in difficulty of the questions among test versions. ETS indicates that scores on both the GRE general test and GRE paper-based test are comparable.

The analytical writing section will be read and scored by two readers, each of whom will rate your critical thinking and writing skills rather than your grammar and mechanics. A few grammatical errors are allowed, but if an essay is plagued with many such errors, your score will be impacted. Each of the two readers of each of your essays will provide a score on a range from zero to six, in one-half point increments. The reader scores for your essays will then be averaged to yield your final essay score. In that case that the scores that are received by the two readers differs by more than 1 point, a third reader will read your essay.

Your score report will contain three scores. For the verbal reasoning section, reported scores range from 200-800, in 10 point increments. In the Quantitative reasoning section, scores range from 200-800, also in 10 point increments. On the Analytical Writing section, scores range from 0-6, in one-half point increments. Along with each of the three scores, you'll be give a percentile rank that indicates the percentage of students who have scored as well or worse than you. Thus, for example, a percentile rank of 72% incidates that 72% of all test takers scored as good or worse than you, and that approximately 29% of test takers scored better than you.

TEST TIPS:

In the last minute of each section, if you have more than a few questions remaining, hurry and guess so that you answer every question.

Spend a bit more time on the first third or so of each section because those questions carry the most weight in determining your overall score.