The shorter GRE General Test, section by section

What the test measures

The GRE General Test is the admissions test that many graduate, business and law programs accept. ETS describes it as measuring verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, critical thinking and analytical writing: skills built up over years and not tied to any one field of study (ETS, Test Content). That has a practical meaning for you. You are not memorising a syllabus of facts. You are practising a small number of kinds of reasoning until they come quickly and reliably under time pressure.

The test has three measures:

• Analytical Writing: one essay, the "Analyze an Issue" task.
• Verbal Reasoning: reading comprehension, text completion and sentence equivalence questions.
• Quantitative Reasoning: arithmetic, algebra, geometry and data analysis, in four question formats.

The five sections

This course is written for the shorter test ETS has given since September 22, 2023 (ETS, GRE General Test Structure; GRE Information Bulletin 2026–27).

Section	Questions	Time	Average time per question
Analytical Writing	1 Issue essay	30 minutes	—
Verbal Reasoning, Section 1	12	18 minutes	1.5 minutes
Verbal Reasoning, Section 2	15	23 minutes	about 1.53 minutes
Quantitative Reasoning, Section 1	12	21 minutes	1.75 minutes
Quantitative Reasoning, Section 2	15	26 minutes	about 1.73 minutes
Total	54 questions + 1 essay	about 1 hour 58 minutes

The last column is our own arithmetic, not an ETS figure: $18 \div 12 = 1.5$, $23 \div 15 \approx 1.53$, $21 \div 12 = 1.75$ and $26 \div 15 \approx 1.73$. Adding the section times gives $30 + 18 + 23 + 21 + 26 = 118$ minutes, which matches ETS's "about 1 hour and 58 minutes."

Order. Analytical Writing always comes first. After it, the Verbal and Quantitative sections may appear in any order (ETS, GRE General Test Structure). Do not build your plan around a particular sequence; be ready to switch between words and numbers.

Section-level adaptation

Verbal and Quantitative are section-level adaptive. The first section of each measure is of average difficulty. The computer then chooses the difficulty of your second section of that measure from your overall performance on the first (ETS, GRE General Test Structure). Do very well on Quantitative Section 1 and your Quantitative Section 2 will be harder.

Three consequences follow:

1. The first section of each measure matters a great deal. It decides which second section you see. Treat Section 1 with full care; it is not a warm-up.
2. Adaptation is by section, not by question. Within a section the questions are fixed, so you may skip, mark, return and change answers freely (more on this below). A hard question in the middle of a section does not mean you got the previous one right.
3. A harder second section is good news, not bad. ETS converts raw scores to the 130–170 scale by equating, which accounts for the difference in difficulty introduced by the adaptation. A given scaled score reflects the same level of performance whichever second section you received (ETS, Understanding Your GRE General Test Scores). If Section 2 feels hard, that usually means Section 1 went well. Keep working steadily.

How each measure is scored

Measure	Reported scale	Increments
Verbal Reasoning	130–170	1 point
Quantitative Reasoning	130–170	1 point
Analytical Writing	0–6	half point

(ETS, GRE General Test Scoring & Reporting; GRE Information Bulletin 2026–27.)

Verbal and Quantitative. For each measure a raw score, the number of questions you answered correctly, is computed and then converted to the scale by equating (ETS, Understanding Your GRE General Test Scores). Within a section, every question counts equally toward the score. Nothing is subtracted for an incorrect answer, so ETS advises answering every question (ETS, Strategies and Tips). Leaving a question blank can only cost you. If a measure has no answered questions at all, it is reported as NS (No Score).

Some questions have more than one correct answer, such as sentence equivalence or "select all that apply." ETS gives credit for these only when every correct choice and no incorrect choice is selected. There is no partial credit (ETS, Overview of the Verbal Reasoning Measure).

Analytical Writing. Your essay is scored holistically, on its overall quality, on a 6-point scale, and the process includes a score from ETS's e-rater scoring engine (ETS, Understanding Your GRE General Test Scores). One score from 0 to 6 is reported. The Analytical Writing unit of this course paraphrases what ETS says each score level looks like.

When you see scores. After the test you see unofficial Verbal and Quantitative scores straight away. The Analytical Writing score is not shown at the test because of the essay scoring process. Official scores are available about 8–10 days after the test and are reportable for five years (ETS, GRE Information Bulletin 2026–27).

The testing tools

ETS lists these design features of the computer-delivered test (ETS, GRE General Test Structure; Strategies and Tips):

• Preview and review within a section: you can look ahead and go back.
• Mark and Review: tag a question, skip it, and return if time remains. A review screen lists answered, unanswered and marked questions.
• Change answers at any time before the section's time runs out.
• An on-screen calculator in the Quantitative sections only. It follows the standard order of operations, has one memory location and a Transfer Display button that copies the display into a single Numeric Entry box (ETS, GRE Guidelines to Using the On-screen Calculator).
• A basic word processor for the essay: insert, delete, cut and paste, and undo. There is no spelling or grammar checker (ETS, Overview of the Analytical Writing Measure).

All of these work within a section: ETS describes moving forward and backward throughout an entire section, not between sections. Plan to finish your review of a section before its clock runs out.

Pacing, with worked examples

Example 1: the Verbal Section 1 budget. You have 18 minutes for 12 questions. Suppose three of them are reading questions on one longer passage that takes about 2.5 minutes to read. Then:

• reading time: 2.5 minutes;
• answering time left: $18 - 2.5 = 15.5$ minutes for 12 questions, or about $15.5 \div 12 \approx 1.3$ minutes each.

Short completion questions often take under a minute. That saved time is what pays for the passage.

Example 2: the checkpoint method. In Quantitative Section 2 you have 26 minutes for 15 questions. A simple checkpoint: by the time 13 minutes are gone, about half the time, aim to have worked through roughly questions 1–7 or 8. If you are well behind, mark the slowest remaining item, enter your best guess and move on.

Example 3: should you guess? With no penalty, a blank is always worth 0. A guess on a five-choice question has a 1-in-5 chance of being right even when it is random, and a better chance when you have eliminated choices. Never leave a question blank. Before the section ends, use the review screen to make sure every question has an answer.

A good rule: if a question has taken about twice its average time and you are not close, choose your best answer, mark it and move on. Every question in a section counts the same, so a hard question is worth no more than an easy one (ETS, Strategies and Tips).

What changed in September 2023

ETS announced the shorter test on May 31, 2023. It removed the "Analyze an Argument" essay and the unscored section, and it reduced the number of Verbal and Quantitative questions. The score scales stayed the same (ETS, Shorter GRE Test Coming September 2023; GRE Guide to the Use of Scores 2026–27). Before that date, the test had two essays, two 20-question Verbal sections of 30 minutes, two 20-question Quantitative sections of 35 minutes and an unscored section, and took about 3 hours 45 minutes (ETS, GRE General Test Structure).

This matters when you use older books or practice materials. The question types are the same, but section lengths and timing differ, and anything about the Argument essay no longer applies.

Retakes and sending scores

Under the 2026–27 Bulletin you may take the General Test once every 21 days, up to five times in any continuous rolling 12-month period, even if you cancelled scores from an earlier attempt. With ScoreSelect you choose which test dates' scores each school receives (ETS, GRE Information Bulletin 2026–27). Policies can change each year, so check the current Bulletin before you book.

A preparation plan

A plan that uses this course and ETS's free material together:

1. Take a diagnostic. Work through ETS's free untimed POWERPREP practice test to learn the software and the question types (ETS, POWERPREP Practice Tests).
2. Study by unit. Work through this course's lessons and do each practice set. Keep an error log: for each miss, write why you chose the wrong answer, not just what the right one was.
3. Write essays. Write at least four or five timed Issue essays. ETS publishes the whole pool of Issue topics, so practise on real ones too.
4. Take this course's full-length practice test under timed conditions.
5. Take ETS's timed POWERPREP test close to test day, and review every miss.

There is no single right amount of study time. Steady short sessions, with careful review of mistakes, tend to beat occasional marathons.

Common traps

• Treating Section 1 as a warm-up. It decides your second section. Give it full effort.
• Panicking because Section 2 feels hard. Equating accounts for the harder section; a hard Section 2 usually means you did well on Section 1.
• Leaving blanks. There is no penalty for wrong answers.
• Assuming partial credit. Questions with several correct answers are all-or-nothing.
• Studying from pre-2023 timing. The question types are the same, but the timing and the essay task changed.

Check yourself

• Can you list the five sections with their question counts and times?
• What decides the difficulty of your second Quantitative section?
• What is the raw score, and is anything subtracted for a wrong answer?
• Which tools can you use inside a section, and which section has a calculator?
• What are the score scales for each measure?
• How many Issue essays will you write on test day, and how long do you have?