GRE Syllabus and GRE Exam Pattern 2017- Graduate Record Examination also known as GRE is a standardized test that is an admission requirement for most graduate institutions/universities. It measures verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, analytical reasoning and critical thinking skills. The exam has been created by the Educational Testing Service (ETS). In addition to the GRE® General Test, there are seven GRE® Subject Tests that assesses knowledge on specific subjects like Biochemistry, Cell and Molecular Biology and so on. There are two test versions of GRE i.e. a computer based test and a paper based test.
GRE Syllabus and Exam Pattern:
The testing time for the GRE® General Test is about 3 hours and 45 minutes. There are 6 sections. The GRE paper is divided into verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning and analytical reasoning sections.
The Verbal Reasoning section further is divided into two sections. There are 20 questions per section. Test-takers need to spend 30 minutes per section. It consists of reading comprehension questions, text completion questions and sentence equivalence questions. The reading comprehension questions tests a wide range of abilities. The passages are extracts that you would normally encounter in graduate and business schools. The topics are based on biological sciences, social sciences, business, humanities, arts and so on. The questions are basically to test if students have understood the main theme of the passages. Students can have an overview of the sample questions by visiting the ETS website that provides sample questions along with the solutions.
Quantitative reasoning is divided into two sections. There are 20 questions per section. The quantitative reasoning has four types of questions- quantitative comparison questions, multiple- choice questions select-one-answer-choice, multiple-choice-questions-select-one-or-more-answer choices and numeric entry questions. The quantitative reasoning assesses the basic mathematical skills of test-takers based on elementary mathematical concepts. It includes topics on algebra, geometry, arithmetic, and data analysis. Test-takers need to spend 35 minutes per section.
The analytical writing measures the critical thinking, analytical writing skills and persuasive writing skills of the test- takers. It consists of Analyze an issue task and Analyze an argument task. The Analyze the issue task assesses the ability of students to think critically about a topic of general interest and to express the thoughts clearly in writing. The analyze an argument task assesses the ability of students to understand, analyze and evaluate arguments and convey the evaluation clearly in the writing. The duration for each task is 30 minutes.
GRE Exam pattern of the paper based test
The pattern of the paper based test is as follows.
The analytical writing consists of two sub-sections- Analyze an issue task and Analyze an argument task. Test-takers need to allot 30 minutes per section. Verbal Reasoning is divided into two sub-sections as well. There are 25 questions per section. Test-takers need to allot 35 minutes per section. Quantitative reasoning is also divided into two sub-sections. There are 25 questions per section. Test-takers need to allot 40 minutes per section.
GRE New Exam Syllabus
The list of topics (or GRE syllabus) that one needs to prepare for the GRE Verbal Reasoning Test are inclusive of basic sentence structure, verb tense, idioms and idiomatic expressions, pronoun agreement, subject verb agreement, modifiers and parallelism. The list of topics for the GRE Quantitative section (or GRE syllabus) are: maths formulas list, number properties, order of operations, percentage, ratio and proportion, profit and loss, simple and compound interest, speed, distance and time, permutation and combination, linear equations, quadratic equations, sets theory, statistics, power & roots, probability, lines and angles, triangles, polygon, quadrilateral, circles, co-ordinate geometry, volume and surface area.
To know more about the GRE syllabus and question types, test-takers can practice questions from the GRE test materials available on the ETS website. .