Last Updated on March 15, 2024
The acronym GRE stands for Graduate Record Examination. The GRE, which is designed and administered by ETS, the Educational Testing Service, is a standardized exam required for entry into many business and graduate schools. The exam provides schools with a universal metric for assessing an applicant’s readiness to take on the challenges of a graduate-level program, including MBA, JD, master’s, and doctoral degree programs. Note that although most MBA programs used to accept only the GMAT for business school applications, many now accept either the GMAT or the GRE.
The most commonly taken GRE is the computer-delivered GRE General Test, which is what we’ll focus on in this article. There are also GRE Subject Tests, which may be required for specific graduate school programs. Those are more specialized, so we won’t cover those here. Additionally, the GRE General Test and Subject Tests may be taken in a paper-delivered format in areas where the computer-based test isn’t available.
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GRE stands for Graduate Record Examination. The GRE is a standardized exam required for entry into many schools.
Now that we’ve answered the question “what does GRE stand for,” let’s take a look at a few important aspects of the GRE.
Here are the topics we’ll cover:
- The Structure of the GRE
- The GRE is Section-Adaptive
- Other Key Features of the GRE
- Key Takeaways
- What’s Next?
The Structure of the GRE
The GRE takes about 1 hour and 58 minutes to complete and is broken down into five sections:
- An Analytical Writing section containing one “Analyze an Issue” task.
- Two Quantitative Reasoning sections: the first contains 12 questions in 21 minutes, and the second contains 15 questions in 26 minutes.
- Two Verbal Reasoning sections: the first contains 12 questions in 18 minutes, and the second contains 15 questions in 23 minutes.
The Analytical Writing section of the GRE is always the first section presented on the GRE. Other than that, the section order is random; you will not be told your section order before you start the exam, and the section order may be different each time you sit for the exam.
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The GRE takes about 1 hour and 58 minutes to complete and is broken down into five sections: one Analytical Writing, two Quantitative Reasoning, and two Verbal Reasoning.
Now that we know all about the structure of the GRE, let’s take a closer look at how the exam functions.
The GRE is Section-Adaptive
As we mentioned earlier, there are two Quant and two Verbal sections on the GRE. On the computer-based exam, they are section-adaptive, meaning that how you perform on the first Quantitative section you see influences the difficulty of the second Quantitative section you see, and likewise for the two Verbal sections — your performance on the first influences the difficulty of the second. So, for example, if you correctly answer most or all of the questions in the first Quant section you see, the second Quant section will contain more difficult questions than it would have if you had incorrectly answered many questions in the first Quant section.
Section adaptivity on the GRE does not “cross over” between disciplines. In other words, your performance on the Quantitative sections will not influence the difficulty of the Verbal sections, and vice versa. Note also that since the Writing section is scored later by a person, not by the computer, that section does not affect the difficulty of any other section.
You may be wondering if you can determine how well you’re performing on the GRE by the difficulty of the questions you see in later sections. It is a mistake to attempt this. For one, trying to determine how well you’re performing as you’re taking the exam distracts you from the task at hand: efficiently and correctly answering the question in front of you.
Secondly, what you consider “easy” or “difficult” may not be the same as what the computer considers “easy” or “difficult.” Perhaps a question that you found extremely challenging was actually a medium-level question by the computer’s standards. On the other hand, you may have breezed through a question that the computer rates as very difficult. No one knows the nuances of the GRE algorithm, so it is a fool’s errand to try to use the section-adaptive nature of the GRE to “decode” your test performance.
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The GRE is section-adaptive, meaning that your performance on the first Quant section influences the difficulty of the second Quant section, and your performance on the first Verbal section influences the difficulty of the second Verbal section.
Other Key Features of the GRE
The GRE allows test-takers a little more flexibility to navigate within sections than the GMAT does. For instance, GRE test-takers can skip questions within a section and flag them to return to later. It’s important to note, however, that once you move on to a new section, you cannot go back to earlier sections to add or edit answers in those sections. You can work on only one section at a time. Nevertheless, the ability to skip around within a section may come in handy if you’re worried about investing too much time into a question that is giving you trouble.
Another notable feature of the GRE is the on-screen calculator available during the Quant sections. Some students choose to take the GRE instead of the GMAT because of the availability of a calculator on GRE Quant, but that strategy is unlikely to get them very far. While the calculator is certainly useful for performing basic calculations, it’s not going to make or break your performance on GRE Quant. The GRE is a thinking test, so the majority of the work you’ll do in the Quant sections will be analytical reasoning, not number crunching. If you’re hoping that the calculator, or any other feature of the GRE, is going to do your work for you, think again!
TTP PRO TIP:
The GRE allows test-takers to skip around within a section, flag questions for later review, and use a calculator during the Quant sections, but it’s a mistake to rely on any feature of the exam to “do your work for you.”
Key Takeaways
In this article, we’ve covered several important pieces of information:
- GRE stands for Graduate Record Examination and is required for admission into many schools.
- The GRE takes about 1 hour and 58 minutes to complete and is broken down into five sections: one Analytical Writing, two Quantitative Reasoning, and two Verbal Reasoning.
- The GRE is section-adaptive: your performance on the first Quant and Verbal sections determines the difficulty of the second section of that type.
- The ability to flag questions for review and the on-screen calculator can be useful tools, but it’s important to know how to use them effectively.
What’s Next?
Now that you know the basics of what the GRE is and how it’s structured, check out our articles about how long to study for the GRE and how to score 330+ on the GRE.
Happy studying!
