The New GRE is designed to measure verbal and quantitative reasoning skills, as well as critical thinking and analytical writing skills that are necessary for your success in graduate school and business school. The new GRE has important changes for test-takers. Here’s what you need to know.
New GRE Test Format Changes
Test-takers can now preview and review questions within a section.
Test-takers can “mark” questions so that they can return to those questions later.
Test-takers can change their answers to questions within a section.
The GRE Quantitative Reasoning section has an on-screen calculator.
There are new answer formats such as numeric entry questions, multiple choice questions with the potential for more than one response, and sentence highlighting questions.
New GRE Test Structure and Length
The new GRE testing time is 3 hours and 45 min and has the following 6 sections.
Analytical Writing
Verbal Reasoning (two sections)
Quantitative Reasoning (two sections)
One unscored experimental section that is usually a Verbal Reasoning or Quantitative Reasoning Section.
The NEW GRE Analytical Writing Section
The analytical writing assessment on the New GRE is used by graduate schools and business schools to assess how well you write. This section of the New GRE is 60 minutes long, consisting of two 30-minute essays: Analysis of an Argument and Analysis of an Issue.
This essay asks you to read and critically respond to an author’s argument. Your goal will be to evaluate that argument. You should consider assumptions behind the argument, evidence neglected in the argument that might strengthen or weaken it, alternatives to the argument, and possible further inferences to be made from it.
This second essay asks you to construct a sound and compelling position in response to a given prompt. What position you take will be less important than how well you develop it. For this essay, there are no incorrect answers, only well- or poorly-made arguments.
The New GRE Verbal Reasoning Section
Verbal Reasoning questions are designed to test your knowledge of standard written English, your ability to analyze and evaluate an argument, and your ability to read critically and analytically. There are three types of questions on the Verbal Section of the New GRE: Reading Comprehension, Text Completion, and Sentence Equivalence. If you’d like to see a more complete breakdown of the verbal content that’s tested on the New GRE, click here
New GRE Reading Comprehension Questions
The Reading Comprehension passages present you with a short section of text (generally from business, social science, biological science, humanities, arts, or physical science). You’ll then be asked a series of questions based on the passage. These questions may ask you, among other things, for the main point of the passage, to paraphrase something asserted in the passage, to make an inference implied by the passage, to identify an assumption behind statements made in the passage, or to identify the function of a part of the passage. click here
New GRE Text Completion Questions
New GRE Text Completion questions present you with short passages of between one to five sentences. Within each passage, there will be one to three blanks where crucial words have been omitted from the text. In text completion passages with one blank, there will be five possible answers, whereas in questions with more than one blank, there will be three possible answers for each blank. If you’d like to see some examples of the New GRE Text Completion questions, click here
New GRE Sentence Equivalence Questions
Sentence Equivalence Questions present you with one sentence that has one blank. Your task is then to select two of the six possible answers that produce clear, grammatical, complete, and logically equivalent sentences. These questions test your ability to understand the greater meaning of a passage, although some important information has been omitted. If you’d like to see some examples of New GRE Sentence Equivalence questions,
The New GRE Quantitative Reasoning Section
The New GRE Quantitative Section is designed to test your content knowledge of basic math as well as your analytical and logical reasoning skills. The math topics tested come from the basics of arithmetic, algebra, and geometry. If you’d like to see a more complete breakdown of the math content that’s tested on the New GRE, click here
Quantitative Comparison Questions
These questions present you with two quantities, and you must determine whether quantity A is greater, quantity B is greater, the two quantities are equal, or the relationship between A and B cannot be determined with the given information. To see examples of Quantitative Comparison questions, click here
Multiple Choice - Select Only One Answer Choice
These are the multiple choice questions that you've seen in the past. On these questions, there is only one correct answer. But, don't be fooled into thinking that these questions will be easy. The math necessary to complete these questions is considered to be basic math, but the logic necessary to solve these problems may be considerable. To see examples of Multiple Choice - Select Only One Answer Choice questions, click here
Multiple Choice - Select One or More Answer Choice
These multiple choice questions may have more than one correct answer; your job is to choose all of the correct answers. To see examples of Multiple Choice - Select One or More Answer Choice questions, click here
In these questions, you must enter your answer as an integer or decimal in a single box or enter it as a fraction in two separate boxes. You will use the computer keyboard and mouse to enter this information. To see examples of Numeric Entry questions, click here
