Revised GRE what you need to know.

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Verbal Section
Current GRE
Reading Comprehension Analogy Antonyms Sentence Completion Analytical Writing Ability (AWA) Text Completion Sentence Equivalence Analytical Writing Ability (AWA)

Revised GRE
Reading Comprehension

If you have been preparing for the Verbal Section of the GRE for the old pattern, the following slides tell you the skills that will be useful for the new GRE as well.

Vocabulary
You need to know as many words as were needed for the old GRE pattern. But there is a small difference.

The good thing in the revised pattern is that the words will not appear in isolation (as in Antonym and Analogy).

The old GRE required you to have a great depth of knowledge of the words (especially for the Analogy kind of questions).

We believe this will lighten the burden of vocabulary development to some extent.

In the revised GRE, the words will always appear in context (as in sentence completion, text completion, sentence equivalence) This makes things a bit easy for you. You do not need to have a very deep understanding of the words. It is sufficient if you are able to understand the word correctly in the context of a sentence.

Reading Comprehension
The nature of Reading Comprehension remains the same. All the reading comprehension skills that you developed for the old GRE pattern will be relevant for the revised GRE as well. These include: Ability to read a passage in a short time Comfort with a variety of topics (literature, history, humanities, bio-sciences, physical sciences) Ability to identify and pick factual information from the passage Ability to correctly sense implicit information (tone of the passage, attitude, author's purpose etc)

Verbal Reasoning
Verbal reasoning skills are as relevant to the revised pattern as it was to the old pattern.
Skills required for the revised pattern are: Ability to understand sentence structures. Ability to understand differentiate between sentences with subtle difference. Since there are no Analogy and Antonym type questions, there is not so much need on the ability to differentiate between words with very similar definitions.

Analytical Writing
The nature of Analytical Writing remains the same. All the reading comprehension skills that you developed for the old GRE pattern will be relevant for the revised GRE as well. These include: Ability to formulate thoughts on a topic (or an issue) and express them clearly through a good flow and examples. Ability to develop a sound argument and present it in a written form. Ability to create simple but effective statements and paragraphs.

Time Management
Time Management is a skill which is relevant for any aptitude test. This is developed through conscious practice. You will need to to practice a number of mock tests in the revised style to develop this skill.

Quantitative Section of the Revised GRE

Quantitative Section
Current GRE
Data Interpretation Quantitative Comparison Problem Solving

Revised GRE
Data Interpretation Quantitative Comparison Problem Solving Multiple choice questions where you need to pick one or more choices Numeric Entry Questions (where you have to enter your answer instead of selecting from a set of choices)

If you have been preparing for the Quantitative section of the GRE for the old pattern, the following slides tell you the skills that will be useful for the new GRE as well.

Maths Topics

The questions of the revised GRE will be based on the same topics on which the old GRE was based on. There are a few additional topics

Normal Distribution Plotting of Parabolic and Circular curves Simple and Compound Interests

Difficulty level of the Questions

Based on the sample questions and books published by ETS, we feel that the difficulty level of the questions in the Quantitative section is same as that in the old pattern. The revised pattern allows use of a calculator. This makes it easy since in past there was a possibility of getting a question incorrect due to calculation error, even if the problem solving approach was correct.

Problem solving skills

More or less similar level of problem solving skills and understanding of Mathematical Concepts in required for the revised pattern. If you have been practicing quant problem solving in the old pattern, all your problem solving skills will be useful for the revised pattern. By Problem Solving skill, we imply:

Ability to understand and interpret the question correctly Ability to capture the information in the form of mathematical equations Ability to identify the right concepts, properties or formulas to be applied for solving the question Ability to solve the equations to arrive at the final answer.

Time Management
Time Management is a skill which is relevant for any aptitude test. This is developed through conscious practice. You will need to practice

a number of questions on each topic of mathematics questions of different difficulty levels A number of mock tests in the revised style to develop this skill.

Scoring for the revised GRE

Sections in the test

Section Analytical Writing Number of Questions One "Analyze an Issue" task One "Analyze an Argument" task Approximately 20 questions per section Approximately 20 questions per section Varies Varies Time 30 minutes per task

Verbal Reasoning (2 sections) Quantitative Reasoning (2 sections) Unscored* Research*

30 minutes per section 35 minutes per section Varies Varies

Total testing time is approximately 3 hours and 45 minutes, including the non-scored section.

In the revised version of the GRE, each section (Verbal and Quant) will be scored independently between 130 to 170 (instead of 200 800 in the old format) The score will increment in steps of 1 (130, 131, 132 ) Sufficient information is not available at this point on how to relate the old style score and the new one.

Structure of the Adaptive Test

There will be 2 sections for Verbal and 2 Sections for Quant Each section will contain 20 questions In the old pattern, you are presented with one question at a time. You can not move to the next question without solving the current one. In the new pattern, you can move over to the next question, revisit previous question and mark a question for review.

You could thus solve the questions that you are confident about and then revisit questions that you found difficult.

Questions ???

If you have further questions, talk to your SFA Or send a email to support@GREedge.com with the subject line 'revised GRE' Visit the GREedge forum. We have created a separate board for discussion on this subject. Browse through the current posts or start a new thread.

http://forums.greedge.com/viewforum.php?f=27