GRE Exam Components
GRE, or Graduate Record Exam, is a test many graduate schools use as an admissions requirement. The purpose of the GRE is to assess an individual's potential for success in a graduate school program. In this way, it's an advanced version of college admissions exams such as the SAT and the ACT. The GRE consists of four component parts. Each time a student takes the test, three of the four parts are scored, and the fourth is used to test new material for future tests. When you take the GRE, you won't know which portion isn't going to count in your score.
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Verbal Reasoning
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The verbal reasoning portion of the test measures reading skills. It assesses a candidate's ability to read a short passage and analyze, evaluate and synthesize information from that passage. It also tests grammatical skills. These questions ask a student to explain a portion of a reading passage or analyze the grammatical qualities of words and sentences.
Quantitative Reasoning
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The quantitative reasoning portion of the test measures mathematical skills. It covers mathematical concepts of arithmetic, geometry and data analysis, and it assesses a student's ability to quantitatively reason an answer to a problem and solve quantitative style problems. These questions involve posing mathematical problems as well as understanding data.
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Analytical Writing
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The analytical writing portion assesses a student's competency to handle the rigors of graduate-level writing assignments. It comes in two sections. In the first, a student has 45 minutes to present an opinion on an issue, and in the second, the student is allotted 30 minutes to analyze a written argument. The analytical writing portion seeks to identify a student's ability to explain ideas, examine claims and evidence, support ideas, sustain an argument and write a grammatically correct and cohesive piece.
In the first section, the student presents an argument on an issue assigned by the test. The student may take any stance as long as she can support it with relevant evidence and examples. In the second section, she must examine an existing argument and critique it for how reasonable and well supported it is.
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References
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