The GRE Test gets accepted at thousands of graduates, business and law school worldwide.

So, the test basically reflects the kind of thinking you will do in these schools, or colleges, and universities. It measures your verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, critical thinking and analytical writing skills.

1. Verbal Reasoning

The Verbal Reasoning section measures your ability to:

• analyze and draw conclusions from discourse; reason from incomplete data; identify author’s assumptions and/or perspective; understand multiple levels of meaning, such as literal, figurative and author’s intent
• select important points; distinguish major from minor or irrelevant points; summarize text; understand the structure of a text
• understand the meaning of individual words, sentences and entire texts; understand relationships among words and among concepts

The Verbal reasoning measure of the GRE General Test assesses your ability to:

• analyze and evalauate written material and synthesize information obtained from it.
• Analyze relations hops among component parts of sentences.
• Recognize relationships among words and concepts.

VR questions appear in several formats, each of which is discussed in detail in the corresponding sections linked to below. About half of the measure requires you to read, interpret and complete existing sentences, groups of sentences or paragraphs. VR measure contains three types of questions- Reading comprehension, text completion, and sentence equivalence.

2. Quantitative Reasoning

The Quantitative Reasoning section measures your ability to:

• understand, interpret and analyze quantitative information
• solve problems using mathematical models
• apply basic skills and elementary concepts of arithmetic, algebra, geometry and data analysis.

The QR measure of GRE General Test assesses your:

• basic mathematical skills.
• Understanding of elementary mathematical concepts.
• Ability to reason quantitatively and to model and solve problems with quantitative methods.

Take a closer look at the Quantitative Reasoning section.

3. Analytical Writing

The Analytical Writing section measures your ability to:

• articulate complex ideas clearly and effectively
• support ideas with relevant reasons and examples
• sustain a well-focused, coherent discussion
• control the elements of standard written English

It requires you to provide focused responses based on the tasks presented, so you can accurately demonstrate your skill in directly responding to a task.

Take a closer look at the Analytical Writing section.

AW measure of GRE General Test assesses your critical thinking anf analytical writing skills by assessing your ability to:

• articulate and support complex ideas..
• construct arguments.
• Sustain a focused and coherent discussion.

It doesn’t assess specific content knowledge.

The AW measure consists of 30-minute “Analyze an issue” task. This task presents an opinion on an issue and instructions on how to respond. You’re required to evaluate the issue, consider its complexities and develop an argument with reasons and examples to support your views.

You’ll use a basic word processor developed by ETS to type your essay responses. The word processor contains the following functionalities: insert text, delete text, cut-and-paste and undo the previous action. Tools such as a spellchecker and grammar checker are not available.

Everyone — even the most practiced and confident of writers — should spend time preparing for the Analytical Writing measure to understand the skills measured and how the tasks are scored. It may also be useful to review the scoring guides, sample topics, scored sample essay responses and rater commentary for each task.

The tasks in the Analytical Writing measure relate to a broad range of subjects — from the fine arts and humanities to the social and physical sciences — but don’t require specific content knowledge. Each task has been tested by actual GRE test takers to ensure that it possesses several important characteristics, including the following:

• GRE test takers, regardless of their field of study or special interests, understood the task and could easily respond to it.
• The task elicited the kinds of complex thinking and persuasive writing that university faculty consider important for success in graduate school.
• The responses were varied in content and in the way the writers developed their ideas.