27-11-2012, 11:53 AM
General Test Practice Book
GRE Practice Book.pdf (Size: 2.36 MB / Downloads: 72)
Purpose of the GRE
General Test
The GRE General Test is designed to help graduate
school admission committees and fellowship sponsors
assess the qualifications of applicants to their programs.
It measures verbal, quantitative, and analytical
writing skills that you have acquired over a long
period of time.
Any accredited graduate or professional school, or
any department or division within a school, may
require or recommend that its applicants take the
GRE General Test. The scores can be used by admissions
or fellowship panels to supplement undergraduate
records and other qualifications for graduate
study. The scores provide common measures for
comparing the qualifications of applicants and aid in
the evaluation of grades and recommendations.
Structure of the GRE
General Test
The paper-based GRE General Test contains five
sections. In addition, one unidentified pretest section
may be included and this section can appear in any
position in the test after the analytical writing
section. Questions in the pretest section are being
pretested for possible use in future tests and answers
will not count toward your scores.
Total testing time is up to 33/4 hours. The directions
at the beginning of each section specify the
total number of questions in the section and the time
allowed for the section. The analytical writing section
will always be first. The verbal and quantitative
sections may appear in any order, including an unidentified
verbal or quantitative pretest section. Treat each
section presented during your test as if it counts.
Preparing for the GRE
General Test
Preparation for the test will depend on the amount of
time you have available and your personal preferences
for how to prepare. At a minimum, before you
take the GRE General Test, you should know what to
expect from the test, including the administrative
procedures, types of questions and directions, the
approximate number of questions, and the amount of
time for each section.
The administrative procedures include registration,
date, time, test center location, cost, scorereporting
procedures, and availability of special
testing arrangements. You can find out about the
administrative procedures for the paper-based General
Test online at www.gre.org, or by contacting
Educational Testing Service (see the GRE Information
and Registration Bulletin).
Before taking the practice General Test, it is
important to become familiar with the content of
each of the sections of the test. You can become
familiar with the verbal and quantitative sections by
reading about the skills the sections measure, how the
sections are scored, reviewing the strategies for each
of the question types, and reviewing the sample
questions with explanations. Determine which
strategies work best for you. Remember—you can do
very well on the test without answering every question
in each section correctly.
Analytical Writing Section
In the paper-based General Test, the topics in the
analytical writing section will be presented in the test
book and you will handwrite your essay responses on
the answer sheets provided. Make sure you use the
correct answer sheet for each task.
It is important to budget your time. Within the
45-minute time limit for the Issue task, you will need
to allow sufficient time to choose one of the two
topics, think about the issue you’ve chosen, plan a
response, and compose your essay. Within the 30-
minute time limit for the Argument task, you will
need to allow sufficient time to analyze the argument,
plan a critique, and compose your response. Although
GRE readers understand the time constraints under
which you write and will consider your response a
“first draft,” you still want it to be the best possible
example of your writing that you can produce under
the testing circumstances.