GRE Preparation

The Graduate Record Examination (GRE) is designed to evaluate your cognitive skills deemed necessary for higher education in USA and many other countries.

The GRE test consists of 3 parts:

1. Analytic writing: The Analytical Writing measure tests your critical thinking and analytical writing skills. It assesses your ability to articulate and support complex ideas, construct and evaluate arguments, and sustain a focused and coherent discussion. It does not assess specific content knowledge.The Analytical Writing measure consists of two separately timed analytical writing tasks:
   • a 30-minute “Analyze an Issue” task
   • a 30-minute “Analyze an Argument” task

   The Issue task presents an opinion on an issue of general interest followed by specific instructions on how to respond to that issue. You are required to evaluate the issue, consider its complexities and develop an argument with reasons and examples to support your views.

   The Argument task requires you to evaluate a given argument according to specific instructions. You will need to consider the logical soundness of the argument rather than agree or disagree with the position it presents.

2. Verbal reasoning: The Verbal Reasoning measure of the GRE® General Test assesses your ability to analyze and evaluate written material and synthesize information obtained from it, analyze relationships among component parts of sentences and recognize relationships among words and concepts.Verbal Reasoning questions appear in several formats, each of which is discussed in detail in the corresponding sections linked to below. About half of the measure requires you to read passages and answer questions on those passages. The other half requires you to read, interpret and complete existing sentences, groups of sentences or paragraphs.Verbal Reasoning Question TypesThe Verbal Reasoning measure contains three types of questions. Click on the links below to get a closer look at each, including sample questions with explanations.
   • Reading Comprehension
   • Text Completion
   • Sentence Equivalence
3. Quantitative reasoning: The Quantitative Reasoning measure of the GRE^® General Test assesses your:
   • basic mathematical skills
   • understanding of elementary mathematical concepts
   • ability to reason quantitatively and to model and solve problems with quantitative methods

   Some of the Quantitative Reasoning questions are posed in real-life settings, while others are posed in purely mathematical settings. Many of the questions are “word problems,” which must be translated and modeled mathematically. The skills, concepts and abilities are assessed in the four content areas below.

   1. Arithmetictopics include properties and types of integers, such as divisibility, factorization, prime numbers, remainders and odd and even integers; arithmetic operations, exponents and roots; and concepts such as estimation, percent, ratio, rate, absolute value, the number line, decimal representation and sequences of numbers.
   2. Algebra topics include operations with exponents; factoring and simplifying algebraic expressions; relations, functions, equations and inequalities; solving linear and quadratic equations and inequalities; solving simultaneous equations and inequalities; setting up equations to solve word problems; and coordinate geometry, including graphs of functions, equations and inequalities, intercepts and slopes of lines.
   3. Geometry topics include parallel and perpendicular lines, circles, triangles — including isosceles, equilateral and 30°-60°-90° triangles — quadrilaterals, other polygons, congruent and similar figures, three-dimensional figures, area, perimeter, volume, the Pythagorean theorem and angle measurement in degrees. The ability to construct proofs is not tested.
   4. Data analysis topics include basic descriptive statistics, such as mean, median, mode, range, standard deviation, interquartile range, quartiles and percentiles; interpretation of data in tables and graphs, such as line graphs, bar graphs, circle graphs, boxplots, scatterplots and frequency distributions; elementary probability, such as probabilities of compound events and independent events; conditional probability; random variables and probability distributions, including normal distributions; and counting methods, such as combinations, permutations and Venn diagrams. These topics are typically taught in high school algebra courses or introductory statistics courses. Inferential statistics is not tested.