The GRE Test Structure

The GRE lasts around 3 hours and 45 minutes, and the test has six sections. There's only one Analytical Writing section. Then you'll move on to the remaining sections of the test: two Verbal Reasoning sections and two Quantitative Reasoning sections, which may be in any order.

Unscored - Research Section

You'll also get one unscored or one research section. Regardless of which one you get, your score for this section will not count towards your official score. Unscored sections are used to test out new questions; to make sure they're the same level of difficulty as the rest of the test.

Sections and Questions

Now, let's go a little deeper into the sections and questions on the GRE. We'll start with the Analytical Writing since this is the first section on the test. The Analytical Writing section is where you'll write your essays. In this part of the test, you will have to take two tasks:

• Analyze an Issue

  You'll have to write an essay in response to a prompt about some general topic.

• Analyze an Argument

  You'll have to read a passage and then discuss the argument that the author gives and whether or not you find it convincing.

Each essay lasts for 30 minutes, so the total time for this section is one hour.

The Verbal Reasoning sections are a little bit like the Reading sections on the SAT or ACT. The actual game here is of vocabulary and reading comprehension. There are three kinds of questions:

• Reading Comprehension

  Reading Comprehension questions about reading passages provided on the test

• Text Completion

  Text Completion questions that ask you to fill one or more blank words in a given text

• Sentence Equivalence

  Sentence Equivalence questions ask you to choose two potential words that could go in a given blank in a sentence

Text Completion and Sentence Equivalence questions are similar to the fill-in-the-blank vocab questions on the SAT, except for the GRE, the obscure vocab words are ramped up to 11 and the rules are even weirder. The Reading Comprehension section is exactly what it says on the test: read some passages and answer questions about them. Each of the two Verbal Reasoning sections is 30 minutes long, with 20 questions per section.

On the Quantitative Reasoning section, you'll be tested on basic math concepts - mostly arithmetic, algebra, geometry, basic calculation, and data analysis. You will not find any high-level calculus or extreme statistical stuff on the test, and you don't have to know a deep knowledge of college-level math to score well. The actual concepts don't go above a high school level; it's the logic of the questions that makes the test hard.

The Quantitative Reasoning section has four different types of questions:

• Quantitative Comparison

  Quantitative Comparison questions where you get two quantities and have to state which is bigger

• Multiple-choice with one answer

• Multiple-choice with multiple answers

• Numeric Entry

  Numeric Entry questions where you input your own answer instead of choosing from a list

Each of the two Quantitative Reasoning sections is 35 minutes long, with 20 questions per section.