How Difficult is GRE?
How Difficult is GRE?
The GRE is an adaptive test. Let us take the Quants section for instance. Everyone’s first Quantitative section is “medium” difficulty, meaning that it may have some questions that most people get right and some questions only a few people get right. The following possibilities can occur:
- If you do medium well in this section, your second Quantitative section will also be medium difficulty.
- If you don’t get many questions correct, then your second Quant section will be much easier.
- If you perform quite well in the first section, you will find your second Quant section will be more difficult.
The same applies for the Verbal section.
It also depends largely on your preparation. The GRE tests your ability to reason with college-level vocabulary, analyze dense academic passages for meaning, and apply math knowledge up through plane geometry to solve problems. Thus, test takers who have the requisite knowledge and have honed their critical thinking skills will find most questions easy and will also perform well on the test
The GRE is a standardized test, meaning that the types of questions you will see, the material you will need to know, and the type of reasoning tasks you will need to do are predictable. This predictability means that you can learn to think like the test makers. Prepare for the test by studying the known range of material tested, practicing with test-like questions, and taking practice tests that simulate the GRE’s adaptive structure.
Following are some factors which affect difficulty level on GRE.
- Math knowledge
For some people who take the GRE, it may be years since they’ve last taken a math class or had to put their geometry skills to use. Or you may just have always disliked math and thought you were done with it once you finished your undergrad math requirements.
To overcome the same,Prep books are a great way to improve your knowledge of GRE math. There are many prep books available to help you become more familiar with the math tested on the GRE.
- Varied Vocabulary
Half of the Verbal Reasoning section tests your knowledge of some abstruse and superfluous vocabulary.Throughout this section, you’ll be asked to select words or sets of words to fill in the blanks in sentences.
How to Overcome It: Fortunately, the GRE repeats many of the vocab words it tests, so you can study and become familiar with the most common vocab words by making flashcards and quizzing yourself.
- The complex wording of questions
GRE makes itself challenging by wording questions in ways that require more logic and analysis to find the correct answer. This can be an especially frustrating aspect of the exam because you may know all the content needed to do well, but you end up getting tripped up by the wording of the questions by not understanding what’s being asked or being fooled into selecting an incorrect answer.
How to Overcome It: The way to avoid this issue is to do so many practice problems that you begin to see through the GRE’s tricks and are no longer fooled by them. Take multiple practice quizzes and tests and, for each one, go through every question you answered incorrectly and make sure you understand what went wrong so you can avoid making those same mistakes in the future.
- The time factor
Like most standardized tests, the GRE doesn’t give you much time to answer each question.You’ll get 30 minutes to write each essay and an average of one minute and 30 seconds to answer each verbal question and one minute and 45 seconds to answer each math question. That means you’ll have to be aware of the time for the entire test. You’ll need to work quickly and efficiently throughout the test in order to get to all the questions.
How to Overcome It:Practice, practice, practice! The more familiar you become with the GRE and the types of questions it asks, the more quickly you’ll be able to answer questions. Be sure to take timed practice exams to see which sections you run out of time most often on and to track your progress. Also, be aware of where you tend to spend a lot of time. Do the critical reading passages take you forever to get through? Do you get stuck on a math problem and lose track of the time, wasting valuable minutes trying to solve it? Focus specifically on eliminating these problem areas and make it a habit to move onto the next question if you’ve spent over a minute looking at a question and still have no idea how to solve it.
There you go – a complete answer to the question, “How difficult is the GRE?”
Know more about GRE Examinations: https://educationstreet.in/counseling/coaching-for-gre-ielts-toefl-sat-gmat/
BY: Piyush Garde
Faculty for GRE Quantitative Section- Education Street
www.educationstreet.in
