The GRE General Test assesses the verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, critical thinking, and analytical writing skills essential for success in graduate programs, including business and law. It measures broad skills developed over time, rather than specific knowledge in any field.
The Verbal Reasoning section assesses your ability to:
- Analyze and draw conclusions from written material, even with incomplete information.
- Identify key points and distinguish between major and minor details.
- Summarize texts and understand their structure.
- Grasp the meanings of words, sentences, and entire texts, including relationships among concepts and various levels of meaning (literal, figurative, author’s intent).
The Verbal Reasoning section includes three types of questions:
- Reading Comprehension,
- Text Completion, and
- Sentence Equivalence.
Approximately half of the Verbal Reasoning section involves reading passages and answering related questions. The other half (50%) requires you to read, interpret, and complete sentences, groups of sentences, or paragraphs.
Quantitative Reasoning
The Quantitative Reasoning section evaluates your ability to:
- Comprehend, interpret, and analyze quantitative data.
- Solve problems using mathematical models.
- Apply fundamental skills and concepts from arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and data analysis.
The skills, concepts and abilities are assessed in the four content areas below.
- Arithmetic topics, including:
- properties and types of integers, such as divisibility, factorization, prime numbers, remainders and odd and even integers
- arithmetic operations, exponents and roots
- concepts such as estimation, percent, ratio,rate, absolute value, the number line, decimal representation and sequences of numbers
- Algebra topics, including:
- operations with exponents
- factoring and simplifying algebraic expressions
- relations, functions, equations and inequalities
- solving linear and quadratic equations and inequalities
- solving simultaneous equations and inequalities
- setting up equations to solve word problems
- coordinate geometry, including graphs of functions, equations and inequalities, intercepts and slopes of lines
- Geometry topics, including:
- parallel and perpendicular lines
- circles
- triangles, including isosceles, equilateral and 30°-60°-90° triangles
- quadrilaterals
- other polygons
- congruent and similar figures
- 3-dimensional figures
- area
- perimeter
- volume
- the Pythagorean theorem
- angle measurement in degrees
The ability to construct proofs is not tested.
- Data analysis topics, including:
- basic descriptive statistics, such as mean, median, mode, range, standard deviation, interquartile range, quartiles and percentiles
- interpretation of data in tables and graphs, such as line graphs, bar graphs, circle graphs, boxplots, scatterplots and frequency distributions
- elementary probability, such as probabilities of compound events and independent events
- conditional probability
- random variables and probability distributions, including normal distributions
- counting methods, such as combinations, permutations and Venn diagrams
Analytical Writing
The Analytical Writing section assesses your ability to:
- Clearly and effectively express complex ideas.
- Support your arguments with relevant reasons and examples.
- Maintain a well-focused, coherent discussion.
- Demonstrate proficiency in standard written English.
You are required to provide focused responses to the tasks presented, showcasing your ability to directly and accurately address the given prompts.
Read More: GRE Syllabus 2025