GRE Sections Computer Based Paper Based

No. of Sections Duration Score Range No. of Sections Duration

Analytical 1 Section-2 tasks 60 minutes 0-6 2 Sections-2 tasks 60 minutes
Writing (Avg. 3.6)
Verbal 2 Sections-40 Qs. 60 minutes 130-170 2 Sections-50 Qs. 70 minutes
Reasoning (Avg.150)
Quantitative 2 Sections-40 Qs. 70 minutes 130-170 2 Sections-50 Qs. 80 minutes
Reasoning (Avg. 152)
Unscored Varies Varies NA NA NA
Research Varies Varies NA NA NA

The GRE is composed of two Analytical Writing Assessment Responses (30 min.
each), two 20-question Verbal Ability sections (30 minutes each), and two 20-
question Quantitative Ability sections (35 minutes each). In addition to these five
sections, an unidentified Experimental section (either Quantitative or Verbal) can
show up on your exam that doesn’t count toward your score. Candidates should not
waste any time trying to identify which section is the experimental section. It is
impossible to identify. Occasionally, there may be an identified optional research
section (but not if there is an Experimental section). But irrespective of all this, the
Analytical Writing section always appears first no matter what, so you need to
practice taking the essays before you begin practice tests.

Verbal Section:
The Revised GRE now contains two verbal sections of 20 questions each, with 30
minutes per section. Each Verbal section consists of: 6 text completion questions, 4
sentence equivalence questions,10 reading comprehension questions.
1. There are no Antonyms and Analogies on the new GRE: The
Antonyms and Analogies are notoriously vocabulary-dependent questions and
they have been removed from the test.
The new GRE is still vocabulary dependent but is only tested on questions
with enough context. The new GRE requires a contextual understanding of
words. So, one needs to spend considerable amount of your prep time learning
vocabulary.

2. A new question type has been introduced: Sentence Equivalence:

The sentence equivalence questions are more or less similar to text/sentence
completion questions, but have quite a few important differences. A sentence
equivalence question has: 1 sentence -1 blank -6 answers to choose from.
One must choose 2 answer choices. The official instruction for this question
type is: “Select the two answer choices that, when used to complete the
sentence, fit the meaning of the sentence as a whole and produce completed
sentences that are alike in meaning.” It means candidates have to identify two
answer choices from the give six choices that give the sentence the same
 meaning. Most of the time, the two answer choices will be near-synonyms and
the strategy to answer sentence equivalence questions on the GRE is to look
for near-synonym pairs in the answer choices but more difficult questions will
probably be less straightforward than that. The test writers always make sure
that each sentence equivalence question has enough context so that
candidates have some help figuring out what words do and don’t fit in the
sentence.

3. A question type has been modified: Text Completion:

In this section, there will be a single paragraph with varying length (anywhere
between one and six sentences) with up to three blank spaces. The job is to
read through the context in the passage and figure out which words in the
answer choices best fit in the blanks. These questions now will have varying
number of answer choices. A text completion question has a short passage
with 1-5 sentences. The passage will have 1-3 blanks and there will be 3
answer choices per blank, or 5 answer choices if there’s only one blank. There
will be one correct answer for each blank in the question There is no partial
credit.

4. Reading Comprehension: The reading comprehension question type has

an increased emphasis on the new GRE. Out of the 20 questions in each verbal
section, close to 10 questions are reading comprehension, which means about
half of your verbal score comes from RC (including Critical Reasoning). There
are 3 types of questions you’ll have to answer on the reading comprehension.
The passages can be academic or non-academic and are drawn from books
and journals about science, humanities, arts, politics and everyday life issues,
too. The passages will vary from 1 – 5 paragraphs in length.
MCQs: -Choose 1 answer: These are average multiple choice questions with 5
answer choices.
MCQs: -Choose 1 or more answers: Here, there will be 3 answer choices, and
one needs to choose every correct answer, which could be one, two or all three
of them. No partial credit is awarded.
Select-in-Passage: This is a totally new sub question type, unique to the GRE.
One needs to click on a sentence in the passage that answers the question.
Quantitative Reasoning:
This section on the GRE tests on basic high school mathematics and reasoning skills,
and how one can apply your math skills to real-life scenarios. But overall, the GRE
has laid more emphasis on Number Properties and Word Problems while
deemphasized topics such as Statistics and Probability.
Each Quantitative section consists of: 8-9 quantitative comparisons questions,8-9
problem solving questions,3-4 data interpretation questions.
 Quantitative Comparison is a new question type that the GRE throws at.
These questions are not like standard math problems one can find on a
common standardized test. Out of the 20 questions in each math section, 8 –
9 questions are quantitative comparison questions, which means about half of
 math score comes from QC. The quantitative comparison problems on the
GRE consist of a short question and two columns labelled A and B. Each
column contains an expression or a number. One needs to compare Quantity
A with Quantity B and decide whether A or B is greater, if they are equal, or if
the relationship between A and B cannot be determined from the provided
information. One advantage of Quantitative Comparisons is that the answer
choices never change. The answer choices will always be: The quantity in
column A is greater/The quantity in column B is greater/The two quantities
are equal/The relationship cannot be determined from the information given.

How Are Raw GRE Scores Converted to Scaled Scores?

After adaptive scoring, another process comes into play before one can get your
official score. 

The raw score is the number of points earned on the exam (one gets a point for each
question you answer correctly, and no points are deducted for incorrect answers).
However, the scores you receive for both Quantitative Reasoning and Verbal
Reasoning will be between 130 and 170. Since Verbal Reasoning and Quantitative
Reasoning both have 40 questions each, one might assume that your final score is
just 130 + the number of questions you answered correctly. While this is close, it’s
not completely true.

The process of GRE raw score conversion is known as equating. Equating is done in

order to control for slight variations in difficulty between exams and specific exam
questions.  In essence, equating takes into account both how many questions you
answered correctly as well as how difficult those questions were.

To look at an example like the scenario described in the adaptive testing section, if
someone answered 30 questions out of 40 correct on Verbal Reasoning, the score
might be just a straight 160 (130 + 30), or it might be a 158 if the questions answered
were easier and/or your test as a whole was easier than average. On the other hand,
the score might be, say, a 163 if the questions answered were more difficult than
average.

The exact process ETS uses for equating isn’t publicly disclosed, but, like adaptive
testing, it won’t have a huge impact on the final score.

How Are the GRE Essays Graded?

Each essay is read by at a trained grader and given a score from 0-6. Then the essay
is scored by an e-reader, a computer program developed by ETS to measure writing
proficiency based on scores in multiple areas. If the human grader’s and e-reader’s
scores “closely agree” (are within a point of each other), then the average of those two
scores is used as the final essay score. If they disagree, a second human grader scores
the essay, and the average of the two human scores is the final essay score. To get the
final Analytical Writing score, the two essay scores are averaged, and that value is
rounded to the nearest half-point.

GRE Experimental Section:

The GRE experimental section is an extra unscored Verbal Reasoning or Quantitative
Reasoning section. So instead of having two Verbal sections, one might get three,
meaning one of them is an experimental section that won’t actually count toward
your score.

Because the GRE experimental section is not marked or indicated in any way on the
exam, it won’t be known whether the Verbal or Quant section someone’s on is just a
regular section or the unscored experimental section.

In addition, the GRE experimental section can appear randomly at any time after the
Analytical Writing (AW) section (the first section of the GRE). This means one could
get this GRE unscored section near the start of the test, in the middle, or even at the
very end!

The purpose of the GRE experimental section is for ETS (the makers of the GRE) to
test the difficulty of questions it plans to use on future tests. This section is
unmarked so that ETS can more accurately predict how test takers will do on new
questions; it also ensures that these new questions are on par with the difficulty level
of current GRE questions.

How does Experimental section differ from the GRE Research

Section?

The GRE research section is similar to the GRE experimental section in that it’s an
unscored Verbal or Quant section used by ETS to test out potential questions in a real
test-taking environment.

However, whereas the experimental section is unmarked (meaning one doesn’t know
whether the section you’re on is experimental or not) and can appear randomly, the
GRE research section is marked and always appears at the end of the test.

What’s more, the GRE research section is completely optional—one can choose

whether or not you want to take it. By contrast, since you don’t know whether a
section is experimental or not, one can’t skip any of them!

Who Gets the GRE Experimental Section?

The vast majority of test takers will get either the GRE experimental section or the
GRE research section—but never both. 
This means that most test takers will have six total sections on the GRE:

 One Analytical Writing section (consisting of two essays)

 Two Verbal sections
 Two Quant sections
 One unscored Verbal or Quant section (experimental or research)

Rarely, some lucky people might not get a GRE unscored section (experimental or
research), meaning they’d get only five sections in total on the test, all of which would
count toward their final GRE scores. This would make their GRE total test time about
30-35 minutes shorter.

How Hard Is the GRE Experimental Section?

The difficulty of the GRE experimental section can vary a lot since ETS is trying out
an array of new GRE questions in order to gauge and track how test takers do on
them.

Luckily, the experimental section doesn’t count toward the final scores, so how one
performs on it doesn’t really matter in the end. (That said, one should want to do well
on this section since it won’t be known whether the section is experimental or not!)

One should also know that although the GRE experimental section can appear at any
time after AW, it is not computer-adaptive as are the other (scored) GRE
sections. This means that the performance on this extra section will not affect or
change the difficulty of questions on any Verbal or Quant sections that come after it.