What is GRE?

What is GRE?

The Graduate Record Examination (GRE) is a standardized test that is important for admissions to masters and doctoral degree programs for most graduate schools / universities in English speaking countries, especially the United States.

GRE is created and administered by the Educational Testing Service (ETS), the same that governs TOEFL as well.

Who can apply?

There is no restriction of age or qualification for appearing for GRE. You just have to be eligible for the university that you are going to apply to as per its admission criteria.

Test Format

The computer based GRE is conducted for roughly 3 hours 45 minutes.

There are ideally 6 sections in the test:

Section	Time	Description
1	60 minutes	Analytical Writing (AWA) Essay 1: Issue – Giving an opinion Essay 2: Argument – analysing the argument (30 mins. each)
	1 minute break
2	30 minutes	Verbal reasoning 4-5 sentence equivalence ques. 5-6 text completion ques. 9-10 reading comprehension ques.
	1 minute break
3	35 minutes	Quantitative reasoning 7-8 quant. comparison ques. 8-9 discrete quant. ques. 3-4 data interpretation ques.
	10 minute break
4	30 minutes	Verbal reasoning 4-5 sentence equivalence ques. 5-6 text completion ques. 9-10 reading comprehension ques.
	1 minute break
5	35 minutes	Quantitative reasoning 7-8 quant. comparison ques. 8-9 discrete quant. ques. 3-4 data interpretation ques.
	1 minute break
6	30 or 35 minutes	Experimental section a third verbal or quantitative section

·        Section 1 is always AWA – that is fixed.

·        Section 2 to 6 can come in any order, but verbal and quantitative will come alternately.

·        The experimental section is not scored – it is just a set of future GRE questions being tested on you. However, there is no way of knowing which one is the experimental section, so do your best for all the sections.

The paper based GRE has 5 sections (no experimental section) and is conducted where the computer based test is not available.

Fees

For all countries except China a fee of $205 is applicable for registering for the test.

Scoring pattern

Three scores are reported:

Verbal Reasoning on a 130–170 score scale

Quantitative Reasoning also on a 130–170 score scale

Analytical Writing score on a 0–6 score level

Tentative scores are shown to you at the end of your test and the official scores are mailed in 21 days after your test date.

Score validity and retests

The GRE score is valid for 5 years.

You can give GRE once every 21 days, 5 times a year.

For more information, visit the official GRE website: www.ets.org/gre