What skills does the GRE test measure?
UPDATED IN 2024 FOR THE NEW GRE
The GRE measures your quantitative and verbal content knowledge, as well as softer skills such as time management, performance under pressure, and the ability to execute consistently on easier problems.
GRE QUANT TOPICS
The GRE quant section is rooted in fundamental mathematics concepts that are taught in high schools.
Here are some of the most common math topics that appear in the GRE quant section:
Arithmetic
Algebra
Geometry
Exponents
Percents
Ratios
Rates
Probability
Combinatorics
Statistics
Number Properties
Advanced math concepts such as trigonometry and calculus do not appear on the GRE General Test.
GRE VERBAL CONTENT
The GRE Verbal Reasoning sections test two broad skillsets: reading comprehension and vocabulary.
GRE Reading Comprehension (RC)
GRE Reading Comprehension passages do not test subject-specific knowledge. Instead, they test your ability to read and comprehend written material, even when it covers an unfamiliar subject. On RC questions, test-takers are often required to:
Identify primary purpose and main ideas
Infer conclusions
Discern logical structure
Recognize style and tone
Strengthen or weaken an argument
Identify the role of different pieces within the argument
Resolve an apparent paradox or discrepancy
To improve your accuracy and efficiency on these questions, please read ourbeginner’s guide to GRE Reading Comprehension.
GRE Vocabulary Questions
About half of the questions on the Verbal Reasoning section of the GRE test your vocabulary. These questions require students to grasp the possible meanings of a sentence with omitted words, and to fill the blanks appropriately with the answer choices provided.
To learn more, check out our beginner’s guide to GRE Text Completion and our beginner’s guide to GRE Sentence Equivalence.
THE GRE ANALYTICAL WRITING SECTION
The GRE Analytical Writing section consists of one 30-minute writing task.
The main skills tested on the Analytical Writing section include writing and logical reasoning ability; grammar and mechanics are of secondary importance. The essay is written on a type of word processing software, but students will not have access to spelling or grammar checkers.
TIME MANAGEMENT ON THE GRE
GRE quant time management
Let’s say that you’ve studied GRE quant material until you’re incredibly confident in your content knowledge. Then, on test day, a tough question pops up on the screen and you spend 10 minutes trying to solve it. Suddenly, you’re out of time, and you didn’t even have a chance to look at the last five questions in the section.
This will obviously wreck your score even if you’ve thoroughly mastered the GRE quant content. So, developing time management skills is just as important as studying the actual content of the test.
The best time management strategy for the quant sections of the GRE is so simple that it feels incredibly silly to even call it a “strategy” at all.
Here it is:
When a question pops up on the screen, read it. (This is scintillating, right?)
Read it again (yes, you should re-read every single question. It’s just too easy to misread something, so give yourself a shot to read it correctly).
If you can’t think of a way to solve the question, immediately “mark” the question, guess, and move on. Use the time you save to be ridiculously accurate on the other questions, and only come back to the questions you’ve marked if you have time at the end of the section.
Keep in mind that the GRE allows you to return to questions that appeared earlier in each section. So there’s absolutely no reason to stubbornly waste time on questions that give you trouble.
GRE verbal time management
On the verbal sections of the GRE, you want to follow the same overall principle as on the quant sections: don’t waste time on questions that are too hard, and maximize your time spent on questions that you can handle.
Implementing this strategy is a bit less cut-and-dry on verbal than it is on quant, and optimal time management can vary from student to student. For example, if you tend to agonize over a couple of tough GRE vocabulary-based questions, then you might choose to answer the reading comprehension questions first.
When we work with our private GRE tutoring students, we often create an individualized time management strategy for the verbal section, based on each student’s individual strengths and weaknesses.
PERFORMANCE UNDER PRESSURE ON THE GRE
Unfortunately, a large number of GRE students absolutely crush homework sets and practice tests, and then bomb their official GRE test.
Sometimes this occurs because students become anxious in the test environment. Suddenly their hard work goes out the window, and their GRE score no longer measures their actual quantitative or verbal reasoning skills – instead, the score simply reflects the fact that they panicked under pressure.
Luckily, performing at a high level while under pressure is a skill that can be learned, just like any other skill. Check out ourbeginner’s guide to test anxiety to learn more.
DEVELOPING CONSISTENCY ON EASY GRE PROBLEMS
It’s pretty normal for GRE students to focus on getting the hardest questions right. After all, if you study a bunch of hard questions then you’ll be fine on the cream-puffs too, right?
Sadly, that simply isn’t true. You can study tough combinatorics and obscure vocabulary as much as you want, but if you tend to be sloppy on easy questions, you’ll never achieve your best GRE score. Unforced errors can hurt your score on any exam, but they can be particularly damaging on an adaptive test such as the GRE, which calculates your score based not only on how many questions you miss, but on which questions you miss. In general, errors on easier questions harm your GRE score more than errors on tougher ones.
GRE test-takers who make sloppy errors often misread the question, fail to check their steps, skip over words in a reading comprehension passage, or make other “brain glitches” that result in errors on easy questions.
How do you improve your execution and consistency on easy GRE questions? Think about the last sloppy mistakes that you made. What caused those errors, and what can you do to fix them next time? Often, GRE test-takers improve when they become more diligent in reading each quant question twice or checking each step of their arithmetic or algebra, or they learn to pay close attention to modifiers on verbal questions, just to name a few examples.
The bottom line: as you study for the GRE, pay particularly close attention to the errors that make you think “how the #$*@%! did I miss THAT one?!” And over time, develop your own unique cocktail of strategies to address your inconsistency on those easy questions.
THE BIG PICTURE on the GRE
Above all, remember that the GRE measures more than your content knowledge. Sure, it’s important to know certain math concepts and to have a solid vocabulary. But on the GRE, it’s equally valuable to focus on:
Managing your time well,
Preparing to perform under pressure, and
Building habits to ensure that you don’t make mistakes on easy questions.