GRE Test
GRE Test Overview
The Graduate Record Exam (GRE) provides graduate schools with a standardized way of measuring a student's verbal, quantitative, and analytical abilities. Colleges and universities use it to compare one students chances of success at their school with another students chances of success. Today's GRE test is available only as a computer based test.
The total test time for the GRE test is up to 3 1/4 hours. The computer based test is divided into several sections, as follows:
| Section | Questions | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Analytical Essay Writing | 1 of 2 | 45 minutes |
| Analytical Argument Writing | 1 | 30 minutes |
| Verbal Section | 30 | 30 minutes |
| Quantitative | 28 | 45 minutes |
| Pretest | varies | 30 minutes |
| Research | varies | 30 minutes |
The computer based test is taken at a testing center. All writing is done with a custom word processor developed by ETS, so that no student will have an advantage due to greater familiarity with the software (which would be the case if a commercial word processor was used). The computer test automatically tailors the difficulty of questions presented to you based on your success in answering the prior question, so no two students will take the same test, and a more dynamic measurement of a students capability results.
