Quantitative Reasoning in the Revised General GRE, like Verbal Reasoning has two sections with 20 questions each and for which 35 minutes solving time is given per section. Each Quantitative Reasoning section has mix of question types:
- quantitative comparison
- problem solving
- numeric entry questions (single and double)
- multiple correct choices (vertical check-box questions)
- single correct choice (i.e. radio button questions – vertical and horizontal)
- data interpretation
This makes a total of 7 different formats which are illustrated in the screenshots below. The screenshots are of the Dilip Oak’s Online test, but they will give you a good idea of what these formats will look like when you take the GRE computer-based test.
Get information on the Oak’s Online GRE test
An on-screen calculator is provided to help in the arithmetic calculations. The sections check the application of the basic math formulae in real life scenarios as well as accuracy in numeric calculations.
Tips for the Handling the On-screen Calculator:
- The calculator should be used when accuracy is required for numeric entry questions; in these the answer can be directly transferred from the calculator to the numeric entry box.
- Another case where the calculator is useful is in long, difficult calculations involving decimals. If a numeric answer is to be given in terms of fractions, however, the calculator will not useful.
- Remember also, that the onscreen calculator doesn’t provide advanced scientific functions.
Don’t use the calculator for simple calculations. It is sometimes faster to calculate or approximate the answer using the given options than to use the calculator.
Related Links
GRE Overview:
- Revised GRE Overview
- Challenges in the Verbal Section of the Revised GRE
- Reading Comprehension and Sentence Completion Questions: Tips
- Analytical Writing Overview
- Analytical Writing: Why 6 & 8 Are Important Numbers in this Section
GRE Practical Details:
- Registering for, Rescheduling and Cancelling Your GRE Test
- Getting Additional GRE Score Reports
- Selecting Which Scores the ETS Should Send to Universities
So, you are preparing for the GRE test. You know that the Verbal section is going to be demanding. What are the big challenges in the Verbal section of the Revised General GRE?
Challenge #1: Reading Comprehension Passages
First, a bit of good bit of news: the Reading Comprehension passages on the Revised GRE test are short. A Verbal section generally contains 5 Reading Comprehension passages, most which are 20-25 lines long; and one of them may be as short as 3-5 lines. The longest passages are of about 40 lines or so. (See ETS’s introduction to reading comprehension, sample questions and tips)
But Reading Comprehension is never very easy. Firstly, the passages cover a wide variety of topics, most of which are very unfamiliar. Here are some topics that have appeared in the past:
- wave motion
- the magnetic compass sense of birds
- the contribution of a musician to the development of a certain musical genre
- volcanic hotspots in the earth’s crust
- the divergent novelistic impulses in the works of a writer are some of the topics that have previously appeared.
In other words the chances are that you will get topics in the exam which you have never come across before. The unfamiliarity of the topics, the complexity of the sentence structure and the fact that the passages pack a lot of information into very little space make the passages a challenge to comprehend.
Challenge #2: Reading Comprehension Questions
Then, there are the questions – between one and three on every reading comprehension passage. Whether the questions require you to select one option out of five or, all the correct options out of three, they all require you to make out whether the statements in the options are equivalent to the statements in the relevant part of the passage. This is difficult since the phrasing in the options and also in the passage can be quite complicated. Further, choosing between close options requires the ability to spot subtle differences between the two.
Challenge 3#: Discrete (Sentence Completion-Type) Questions
The Discrete questions are so-called since, unlike the Reading Comprehension questions, they do not come in sets on a passage. Discrete questions require the test–taker to complete one or more sentences with one or more blanks in them. One type, the Sentence Equivalence questions, requires you to complete the given sentence by selecting two synonyms out of the six options provided (see ETS’s sample sentence equivalence questions, introduction and tips). Others, called the Text Completion Questions can have up to 5 sentences and between 2-5 blanks (see ETS’s sample questions, introduction and tips)
The discrete questions require you to have a good understanding of sentence structure and of what words imply in a certain context. Since the words used in the options are often unfamiliar or are familiar words used in an unfamiliar way, discrete questions also demand that you have a good vocabulary.
Tips for Preparing for the Verbal Section
- Learn the vocabulary – knowledge of high-level vocabulary is still essential for the Discrete and Sentence Equivalence questions. Don’t believe anyone who tells you it isn’t. It is also useful for Reading Comprehension passages. So:
- Find one of the standard GRE vocabulary lists available and start learning well in advance. The lists generally contain 4,000 words and will take around 3 months to learn.
- Explore various methods of learning, because there are many methods and it might take a combination of methods to help you remember the words – and the combination of methods that works for one person may not work for another
- Revising is of utmost importance. Remember, if you don’t keep revising, you are bound to forget the words.
- Build up your exposure to areas outside the topics you normally read on – read articles from sources like the op-eds (editorials) of the New York Times (look for the ‘opinion’ heading in the top right corner). Such articles will be on a variety of topics and the kind of vocabulary and sentence structure is similar to what you have on the GRE. So, they provide excellent reading practice, especially if you keep referring to a dictionary.
- Get used to reading passages on-screen – reading on paper and on a computer screen are two entirely different things. Even if you have had a lot of practice reading on paper, reading on the screen can be quite a difficult exercise; when you are answering questions on a tough reading comprehension exercise, all the scrolling up and scrolling down can be pretty confusing. The remedy? Lot’s of practice.
Related Links
ETS’s sample questions of all three types
GRE Overview:
- Revised GRE Overview
- Challenges in the Verbal Section of the Revised GRE
- Quantitative Reasoning Question Type Overview
- Analytical Writing Overview
- Analytical Writing: Why 6 & 8 Are Important Numbers in this Section
GRE Practical Details:
- Registering for, Rescheduling and Cancelling Your GRE Test
- Getting Additional GRE Score Reports
- Selecting Which Scores the ETS Should Send to Universities
When the Revised General GRE test was launched (way back on 1 August 2011), a whole host of changes was introduced. One consequence was a revamped Verbal Reasoning part in which there are now:
- two Verbal sections in the test with a total of 40 questions, instead of one section with a total of 30 questions
- no Antonyms and Analogy questions – these have been replaced by more Reading Comprehension passages.
- Text Completion questions (which require you to fill up to 3 blanks in a passage which can contain up to five sentences) and
- Sentence Equivalence questions (which require you to select two correct synonyms to fill in the blank in the sentence out of the 6 options given)
- Sentence Completion questions with single- and double-blanks
.
To sum up, Reading Comprehension is now more important, the Sentence Completion type questions got a little harder to get right and Vocabulary is more or less just as important as it was earlier – so, you still have to learn that GRE word list!). As a result of those two changes, students also find the Verbal section harder to complete on time. So, how do you handle that difficulty?
Tips for Handling the Verbal Section
- Get plenty of practice with computer-based tests: no matter how much practice you have done on paper, a whole computer-based test is a very different thing – and take at least a few tests along with the essay (Analytical Writing) section.The Analytical Writing section puts a heavy drain on your time, energy and concentration, and you should not encounter that for the first time in your actual GRE test!
- Focus on the easier questions first – don’t get stuck on the difficult ones and waste time on them in the beginning. Start by quickly answering the questions that you find easiest.
- On the other hand, don’t leave questions unanswered – you may not have time to come back to unanswered questions in the Verbal section So, even if you are not very sure about the answer to a question, mark in your best guess and if there is time come back to it.
But, beyond that what are the specific challenges involved in the Verbal section of the Revised General GRE and more important how do we gear up to meet them? Read more on our next posts on the difficulties in the Reading Comprehension and Sentence Completion, and how to get an edge in cracking them?
Related Links
GRE Overview:
- Revised GRE Overview
- Reading Comprehension and Sentence Completion Questions: Tips
- Quantitative Reasoning Question Type Overview
- Analytical Writing Overview
- Analytical Writing: Why 6 & 8 Are Important Numbers in this Section
GRE Practical Details:
- Registering for, Rescheduling and Cancelling Your GRE Test
- Getting Additional GRE Score Reports
- Selecting Which Scores the ETS Should Send to Universities
The GRE test, conducted by ETS, is one of the world’s most widely used tests for admission to universities both in America and worldwide. On 1 August 2011, the ETS introduced the Revised GRE test. This exam lasts for about 4 hours and consists of 3 major of section types:
The Structure of the Revised General GRE
|
Section Type |
No. of Sections |
No. of Questions per Section |
Time Allotted |
Order in Exam |
Score Scale |
|
Analytical Writing |
1 |
2 essay topics |
30 min per essay; 1 hour totally |
Always first |
0 – 6 |
|
Verbal Reasoning |
2 |
20 |
30 min per section; 1 hour totally |
Not fixed; randomly decided |
130 – 170 |
|
Quantitative Reasoning |
2 |
20 |
35 min per section; 1 hour totally |
Not fixed; randomly decided |
130 – 170 |
Unscored and Research Sections
In addition to the regular sections there may also be a 30 or 35-minute ‘Unscored’ section, which may come at any point after the Analytical Writing Section. Sometimes in place of the Unscored section there may be a 30 or 35-minute ‘Research’ section, which always comes at the end of the test. Both the Unscored and Research sections usually consist of an extra Quantitative or Verbal Reasoning section.
The ETS uses the Research section for testing new kinds of questions. The Unscored section is also used to make sure that the level of difficulty and the scoring in different editions of the test and in individual tests is the same. Neither the Unscored or Research sections contributes to a test-taker’s actual score.
If an unscored section appears in the test, there is usually no way of identifying which section is unscored – all that the test-taker will know is that there are 3 Verbal or 3 Quantitative sections instead of 2. So, all sections have to be attempted equally seriously. The Research section however, always comes at the end and therefore can be easily identified and skipped.
There will be a break of 10 minutes after the second section and breaks of 1 minute between the other sections, bringing the total testing time to about 4 hours.
The Section-Level Adaptive Format
The revised general GRE has a section-level adaptive format in the Verbal and Quantitative Reasoning sections (but not in the Analytical Writing section which has only one topic in the Issue Task and one topic in the Argument Task). This means, that the computer selects questions for the second Verbal or Quantitative section according to your performance in the first section of that type. So, if you have done well in the first section of a particular type, in the next section of the type you will get a greater number of hard questions which will allow you to score more since your score depends on both the number of questions you get right and their difficulty level.
In this format of the exam you can:
- see all the questions in a section once you have entered a section
- choose which questions you want to solve first and which ones you want to solve last and
- go back, review and change your answers
A more detailed discussion of the various sections and question-types follows in later blogs, which you will be able to read soon on this site.
Verbal Reasoning and Quantitative Reasoning Score Scales
The scores for both the Verbal Reasoning and Quantitative Reasoning sections are on a scale of 130-170 with 1-point increments. Your scores in these sections depend on your performance on the questions given and on the number of questions answered in the time allotted. Within each section, all questions contribute equally to the final score.
Information on the score scale for Analytical writing will be given in our soon-to-come blog on Analytical Writing .
But if you really want to know what the Revised General GRE test is like, try out our free full-length online GRE Tests. Also sign up for our 15-day trial for loads of top-notch practice!
GRE Overview:
- Challenges in the Verbal Section of the Revised GRE
- Reading Comprehension and Sentence Completion Questions: Tips
- Quantitative Reasoning Question Type Overview
- Analytical Writing Overview
- Analytical Writing: Why 6 & 8 Are Important Numbers in this Section
GRE Practical Details:
- Registering for, Rescheduling and Cancelling Your GRE Test
- Getting Additional GRE Score Reports
- Selecting Which Scores the ETS Should Send to Universities