The gre cheat sheet

Analytical Writing

ASSESSMENT

In this section, you’ll be asked to write two essays: one is called the “Issue,” and the other is the “Argument.” You’ll have 30 minutes to complete each essay.

1

Issue

In the Issue essay, you’ll be asked to analyze or respond to a general statement (typically about politics, culture, or education) and take a position on the issue.

2

argument

In the Argument essay, you’ll be asked to examine the logic of a text (typically writing no longer than a paragraph). This essay requires close reading and a firm grasp on the rules of logic.

Analytical Writing

scoring

Your essays will be scored by professional graders (typically university literature/writing professors) on a scale of 0.5-6.0, based on .5 increments. These graders are looking for the “three c’s:” clarity, coherency, and cogency.

Clarity

Is your thesis or argument clear to the grader? Choppy sentences, unnecessary words, and grammar and spelling errors will make your essay difficult to read. The graders have about 30 seconds to grade each essay, so it needs to be crystal clear.

Coherency

A clear essay is usually a coherent essay, meaning that all of your points come together to create a logical whole.

Clarity

A cogent essay is one in which the argument(s) is supported by solid evidence, either from the text (if it’s an Argument essay) or from one’s own knowledge of the issue.

Again, the graders only have 30 seconds to grade your essay. So it needs to be clear, coherent, and cogent from the get go. As any teacher will tell you, well-written essays take much less time to grade than poorly written essays do. If your grader has to take the entire 30 seconds to read your first paragraph because it’s so unclear, that doesn’t bode well for your score.

Speaking of your score… The total score for the essay portion of the GRE is the average of the two essay scores. A 0.0 means that you either didn’t do the essay at all, or just decided to type a bunch of gibberish instead of answering the prompt. So, it’s difficult to get a 0.0; most students fall between a 3.0 and 5.0. A 6.0 means that you knocked it out of the park with a well-written, insightful essay of 80 lines or more.

Verbal Reasoning

Assessment

The Verbal Reasoning section is, not surprisingly, about how well you know words and how to use them. An average American vocabulary will not get you through the intense sentence completion questions or reading comprehension exercises.

To prepare for this section, the best thing to do is read, read, read. Read scholarly articles. Read great American (and British) novels. Read high-level nonfiction. Vocabulary flashcards can help, too. But any English teacher will tell you that if you learn a new word in the context of a book or article, especially one that interests you, you are much more likely to remember it when the time comes.

ETS has developed three types of questions, each designed to test a different facet of your verbal reasoning skills.

Verbal Reasoning

scoring

Both the Verbal Reasoning and Quantitative Reasoning (aka Math) sections are “section-level adaptive,” which means that based on your performance in the first section, you’ll get either a more difficult or less difficult second section of questions.

All answers contribute equally to your final score in each section, and the raw score — which is converted to a scaled score that adjusts for difficulty level and the differences in test editions — is the number of questions you answered correctly.

Quantitative Reasoning

ASSESSMENT

Nonmath lovers, don’t worry. You won’t have to do any advanced math on the GRE. The type of math you’ll be asked to do is the stuff you learned in high school: basic geometry, algebra, probability, word problems, etc.

The difficult part isn’t necessarily the level of math (although if it’s been awhile since you took high school math classes, you’ll need a bit more of a refresher), but the complexity of the problems created by ETS.

You don’t even have to show your work! But that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to do all of the problems in your head.

Quantitative Reasoning

scoring

The Quantitative Reasoning (aka Math) section is graded in the same way as the Verbal Reasoning section.