The GRE (Graduate Examination Exam) is an exam that aims to measure your ability in verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, and your skills to think and write in an analytical way. The General GRE assesses those capacities in general topics and not in specific fields of study.
1. What is the GRE? The GRE (Graduate Examination Exam) is an exam that aims to measure your ability in verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, and your skills to think and write in an analytical way. The General GRE assesses those capacities in general topics and not in specific fields of study. Usually, the exam is an essential requirement to request admission to postgraduate programs in the United States and other countries as well, specially english speaking countries. With the results obtained in the exam, the admission offices seek to understand the way a candidate thinks and argues about academics topics, and know if he would be able to unfold successfully in a competitive postgraduate program.
2. Types of GRE: At this moment, there are two types of GRE. The GRE computer-based which is administered through a computer and the GRE paper-based which is printed. In most countries, the GRE available is the computer-based. Therefore, you will only be able to take the GRE paper-based if you live in a country where there are not enough technological resources to take the exam through a computer.
Candidates interested can take, additionally to the general GRE, the GRE focused in specific subjects. These is available only paper-based in the following fields:
· Biochemistry and Molecular and Cell Biology
· Biology
· Chemistry
· English Literature
· Math
· Physics
· Psychology
3. Sections of the GRE: The GRE is composed by three sections. The first section of the exam is Analytical Writing. Its main purpose is to evaluate your capacity to analyze and support complex ideas, construct and evaluate arguments, and maintain a focused and coherent discussion about an academic subject. In this section, you will have to complete two tasks. In the first task, you will have to write your opinion about a subject of general interest that will be given to you, and later, in the second part of the section, you will have to evaluate and present an analysis of an argument made by a third person.
The second section of the GRE is Verbal reasoning. This section aims to know your skills in evaluating and comprehending written material, synthesizing written information, analyzing sentences and understanding words and concepts in English. In this part of the exam, you will have to answer three types of questions. The first ones are about reading comprehension where you will be asked to read some passages and answer questions about them. The second type of questions requires you to complete uncompleted texts and answer some questions about them. This section also has questions where you will be asked to fill the blanks in sentences.
The last section of the GRE is Quantitative Reasoning. This section will measure your ability and capacity to understand elemental math concepts in four areas: arithmetic, geometry, algebra and statistics.
It is important to highlight that both in the Verbal Reasoning and Quantitative Reasoning sections, questions are adaptive. In that sense, the difficulty of the questions in the second part of each of the sections will depend on your performance in the first part of the section. If in the first questions you had a good performance, the difficulty of the second part will be higher.
4. Length of the GRE: Completing the GRE computer-based will take you 3 and a half hours. You will have 60 minutes to finish the Analytical Writing Section. Of those, you will be given 30 minutes to write each of the two tasks. After, you will start with the Verbal reasoning section that is also divided in two 35 minutes parts, in which you will have to answer 50 questions. Finally, you will have to do the Quantitative Reasoning section, which has two 40 minutes parts, in which you will have to answer 50 questions.
5. GRE Scores: In the GRE, the Quantitative Reasoning and Verbal Reasoning sections are scored in a scale of 130-170. The score you will get in these sections will depend not only in the number of correct answers, but also in the difficulty of the questions answered. Meanwhile, for the Analytical Writing section scores are given in a scale between 0-6. Usually, academic institutions don’t establish a minimum GRE score to apply to their postgraduate programs, as GRE results are a complement to other admissions requirements. However, the medium between the people that have taken the exam has been 150.70 in the Verbal Reasoning section, 151.91 in the Quantitative Reasoning Section and 3.61 in the Analytical Writing section.
6. Which institutions accept the GRE? The GRE is a worldwide known exam, recognized by multiple admission offices of postgraduate programs, not only in the United States but also in other english speaking countries. The complete list of institutions that ask for and accept the GRE can be found in the web page https://www.ets.org/gre/revised_general/about
7. Validity of GRE scores: As soon as you finish the exam, you will be able to see the non-official results of the Quantitative Reasoning and Verbal Reasoning sections in the test center. Your official results, including the score of the Analytical Writing section, will be available online between 10-15 days after taking the exam. It is important for you to know that, when registering for the GRE, you can ask your results to be sent to four academic institutions. The scores obtained in the GRE have a validity of five years.
8. How to register to the GRE? You will be able to take the GRE in more than 700 centers located in 160 countries. The computer-based exam is offered all the year while the paper-based exam is offered up to three times per year in places where the computer-based test is not available. The easiest way to register for the text is online, creating an account in the web page https://mygre.ets.org/greweb/login/login.jsp
9. Price of the GRE: The price of the general GRE is standardized and is USD$185. If you are interested in taking the GRE in a specific subject, you can pay USD$150.
10. How many times can you take the GRE? The GRE can be taken every 21 days, up to five times per year.
