As per the 2018 GRE exam pattern, GRE exam now constitutes of two formats and they are GRE General Test and GRE Subject Test. The first part of the test, the General Test, it includes standard student testing process such as verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, and analytical writing skills. GRE Subject Test is focused on specific subject test depending on the student’s profile and as per the requirement of the college.
Following is the GRE syllabus consisting of analytical writing, verbal reasoning, and quantitative reasoning.
Analytical Writing
Analytical Writing aims to test the candidate’s skills and ability to tackle complex ideas with logic and clarity. This section is also to check if the candidate is capable enough to write arguments with logic and evidence, sustain the idea and take control of the writing flow.
Verbal Reasoning
The verbal reasoning section measures the candidate’s analyzing skills, the ability to come to a conclusion, summarizing, breaking down word meanings, and more.
- Basic Sentence structure: Nouns, Pronouns, Adjectives
- Verb Tense
- Idioms & Idiomatic Expressions
- Pronoun Agreement
- Subject-Verb Agreement
- Modifiers
- Parallelism, etc.
Quantitative Reasoning
The quantitative reasoning section tests the ability of understanding the quantitative information, analyzing and interpreting quantitative information, applying mathematic concepts of geometry, algebra, statistics, etc., solving mathematical problems and more. Some of the topics covered under this section of GRE exam are:
- Percentage
- Number properties
- Profit and loss
- Order of operations
- Ratio and proportion
- Linear equations
- Lines and angles
- Probability Statistics: Average, Median, Mode, Range, Standard deviation
- Co-ordinate geometry
- Quadratic equations
- Speed, distance and time
- Simple and compound interest
- Circles Triangles, etc.
GRE Subject Test
- Biology Test
- Chemistry Test
- Mathematics Test
- Literature Test
- Physics Test
- Psychology Test
*The section for Biochemistry (Cell and Molecular Biology) has been discontinued since December 2016. However, the scores of this test can be reported for the next five year for candidates who wrote the exam in 2015-2016.
GRE exam pattern
GRE syllabus is divided into three sections, Analytical Writing, Verbal Reasoning and Quantitative Reasoning. The time run for the exam is three house and thirty minutes for paper-based, and for computer-based, it is 3 hours and forty minutes. Candidates can opt for either, and can take the online general test once in every 21 days, up to five times in a year. The exam cost is 150 USD.
Paper-based
The paper-based exam constitutes of two sub-sections of Analytical Writing, Verbal and Quantitative Reasoning. The variable sections of Unscored and Research are not included in the paper-based exam.
Computer based
The computer-based pattern is divided into two-sub-sections with forty questions in total from Verbal Reasoning and Quantitative Reasoning. Analytical Writing has only one section that contains two tasks with the time duration of one hour. Further, there are two other variable sections included in the computer-based pattern exam. Unscored and research section are not included in the final GRE Scores and may vary.
GRE general test format
PAPER-BASED
|
NO. OF SECTIONS |
DURATION |
Analytical Writing
|
2 sections- 2 tasks | 60 minutes |
Verbal Reasoning
|
2 sections- 50 questions
|
70 minutes
|
Quantitative Reasoning
|
2 sections- 50 questions
|
80 minutes
|
Unscored
|
NA | NA |
Research
|
NA | NA |
COMPUTER-BASED
|
NO. OF SECTIONS |
DURATION |
Analytical Writing
|
1 section- two tasks | 60 minutes |
Verbal Reasoning |
2 section- 40 questions
|
60 minutes |
Quantitative Reasoning |
2 section- 40 questions
|
70 minutes |
Unscored
|
Varies | Varies |
Research
|
Varies
|
Varies
|
*the structure may be reliable to change as per the changes by ETS
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