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Understanding the System at GRE
The Graduate Record Examination (GRE) conducted by the Educational Testing Service of the USA (ETS hereafter) is designed to assess the skills of graduate students aspiring to pursue studies in graduate schools and fellowship programmes in the USA in particular as also in some educational institutions located outside the USA. Students from numerous countries aspire for admissions to institutions that consider scores at the GRE for granting admissions. The idea is to have a test that measures skills acquired in (A) Verbal Reasoning, (B) Quantitative Ability and (C) Data Interpretation over a period of time. This means that inputs that one needs for the GRE are those that one has acquired at school and not further.

There are some really laudable aspects of the GRE that makes it such a transparent process.

The ETS has spelt out what they want to test really in the GRE and what topics they expect the test takers to be familiar with when they take the GRE. We shall see both of these from section to section as under:

The Verbal Section
The verbal section measures your ability to analyse and evaluate written material and synthesize information obtained from it, to analyse relationships among component parts of sentences, to recognize relationships between words and concepts, and to reason with words in solving problems.

The verbal section contains the following question types:
  Antonyms
  Analogies
  Sentence Completion
  Reading Comprehension

The Arithmetic Section
  Arithmetic Questions may involve: arithmetic operations, powers, operations on radical expressions, estimation, percents, absolute value, properties of integers (e.g., divisibility, factoring, prime numbers, odd and even integers), the number line
  Algebra Questions may involve: rules of exponents, factoring and simplifying algebraic expressions, understanding concepts of relations and functions, equations and inequalities, solving linear and quadratic equations and inequalities, solving simultaneous equations, setting up equations to solve word problems, coordinate geometry, including slope, intercepts, and graphs of equations and inequalities, applying basic algebra skills to solve problems
  Geometry Questions may involve parallel lines, circles and their inscribed central angles, triangles (including special triangles), rectangles, other polygons, area, perimeter, volume, the Pythagorean theorem, angle measure in degrees

The Data Interpretation Section
Data Analysis Questions emphasize understanding basic principles and reasoning within the context of given information. Questions may involve: elementary probability, basic descriptive statistics- mean- median- mode- range- standard deviation- percentiles, interpretation of data in graphs and tables- line graphs- bar graphs- circle graphs- frequency distributions.

This is the broad syllabus of the Graduate Record Examination (the GRE) insofar as the Data Interpretation Section is concerned in the very words of the Educational Testing Service that conducts the GRE. The test administering body itself tells you what is the range of topics the students must be familiar with. That makes things fairly transparent. It is also important to note that there are clear conventions laid down. For example, if you are asked to reckon with √ X, then you are to consider only the positive square root of X if X is not equal to zero. This shows clarity on the part of the examiner.

What separates the GRE from a school –level test is however breadth of perception.

We can almost hear some of you asking the meaning of breadth of perception. We shall have to necessarily use illustrations to drive home this point.
Illustration 1
Imagine that you are told that Liquid D is an admixture of Liquids A, B and C in the ratio of 3:4:11 and the ratio of the prices of Liquids A, B and C is 13: 11: 7. You are then asked as to how much would 2 litres of Liquid D cost as a percentage of the price of 5 litres of Liquid D.

Now see what is meant by breadth of perception. The fellow learning mathematics at school will leap and get hold of pen and paper and then add 3, 4 and 11 and arrive at the fact that Liquid A, B and C respectively constitute 1/6th, 2/9th and 11/18th of Liquid D. He then gazes blankly at the figures that he has before him. He does not know how to proceed. The graduate student knows that whatever be the price of a litre of Liquid D, the price of 2 litres of Liquid D will fundamentally be 2/5th of the price of 5 litres of Liquid D and therefore the crux of the question is expressing 2/5th in percentage terms; 2/5th is 40%. The answer to the question is that 2 litres of Liquid D will cost 40% of the price of 5 litres of Liquid D. The ratios of the three liquids have nothing to do whatsoever with this question. Nor have the ratios of the pieces got to do anything with the question this realisation is what determines breadth of perception.
Illustration 2
Imagine that you are asked as to what will be the remainder when 8 divides 963. The person skilled at mathematics may be able to answer this question in a few days time since multiplying 9 with itself 63 times is a Herculean task and then dividing the result with 8 will be another huge task. The person with breadth of perception realises that 963 is essentially (8+1)63. In the expansion of 963 there will be 863 and 862 and 861 and so on till 81 with integral co-efficients (all of which are essentially multiples of 8 and therefore eminently divisible by 8) whereas there will be one and only one term at the end that will have nothing to do with 8. This last term will be 1. Thus when one divides 963 with 8, the remainder is 1. This is what the graduate student who has seen a lot more of the world after finishing school will say in a minute. He has been putting shine on the skills that he has acquired at school. This shine is what is being tested at the GRE.

The Important Aspects of the GRE
The following are the most important aspects of the GRE:
  In the computer-based General Test, the verbal and quantitative sections are adaptive. The Analytical Writing Assessment Section is not computer adaptive.
  At the start of each section, you will be presented with a test question of medium difficulty. What is medium and what is difficult is never defined by the ETS. It is not written alongside the question whether it is of medium difficulty or easy or tough. When the ETS have not defined what they call medium difficulty and what is not, we are not to depend on anyone else’s judgement about the level of difficulty of a particular question. Ignore anyone who professes to present to you questions for example with Difficulty Level 1 as the easiest and Difficulty Level 10 as the toughest. These so-called difficulty levels are all homemade. They have no basis. It would be logical to make an assessment whether a question is easy or medium or tough from the actual questions in the Official Source.
  The ETS has a marvellous system whereby the student community judges whether a question is easy, or moderately easy or moderately tough or tough. Even the paper setter at the GRE does not determine whether a question is tough or easy. Students the world over, who have written the GRE in the last three years, decide which question is easy and which is tough. If you will see in the official publications of the ETS, they clearly lay down the scoring methodology. The ETS has carried out a survey of what percentage of students was able to answer each particular question in the past three years. The findings of this survey are available for the world to see in their official publications. If the ETS finds that, for example, less than 20 percentage of all the students who wrote the GRE the world over have answered Question A correctly, that question would be classified as tough whereas a question where over 80% of the students have answered it correctly is classified as easy and so on. When this finding is in the official publications of the ETS, relying on any CD other than the POWERPREP CD is fraught with the risk of being led astray. Who except the ETS can tell you how many percent of the students who wrote the GRE the world over found Question A easy and how may found Question B tough?
  If you answer the first question correctly in each section, the next question typically will be one of greater difficulty. This is why it is of paramount importance to be solid on concepts.
  If you answer the first question incorrectly, the next question typically will be one of lesser difficulty. This is why if you guess and fall flat, you may find it difficult to register a decent score at the GRE.
  As you answer each question, the computer scores that question and uses that information, as well as your responses to any preceding questions and information about the test design, to determine which question will be presented next.
  Anyone who tells you that the level of difficulty keeps rising with each question that you answer correctly at the GRE (or the GMAT for that matter), knows nothing about either of these tests. The computer does not always select a tougher question when you answer a question correctly or an easier question when you answer incorrectly. This is because the test design includes several factors in addition to the difficulty level of the questions. Therefore to say that the level of difficulty rises with each question correctly answered is not correct. The examination takes an overall picture of the examinee.   
  The computer-adaptive GRE General Test is designed such that the questions you see are influenced by three factors: (A) Difficulty level of the questions already answered (correctly and incorrectly) (B) Required variety of question types and (C) Coverage of specific content.
  The next question posed to you will be the one that best reflects both your previous performance and the requirements of the test design.  This means that different test takers will be given different questions.
  Because each question that the computer selects for you is determined by your answers to previous questions, you cannot move on to the next question before you answer the question that appears on your screen.  This is why one must be solid on concepts.
  Once you answer a question and confirm your response, you cannot return to that question and change your answer.  The computer has already scored that answer and used it as a factor in selecting succeeding questions.
  Your score in each section will be based on the number of questions you answer as well as on the difficulty levels of the questions you answer correctly and incorrectly.  Typically, a correct answer to a difficult question has a greater positive effect on your score than does a correct answer to a relatively easy question. It is also possible to earn a very high score even if you answer several questions incorrectly.
As to questions such as the following, we shall request you to look up the POWERPREP CD. We see no need for reinventing the wheel.
(I) At what periodicity is the GRE held?
(III) How much time do you have for writing the GRE?
(III) How many questions are generally asked in each of the three sections (Verbal, Quantitative Ability and Analytical Writing Sections)?
The GRE has, in all, three sections including (1) the Analytical Writing Section that has writing assignments on two topics one is of 45 minutes’ duration and the other is of 30 minutes’ duration, (2) the Verbal Section of 30 minutes duration that has 30 questions involving Sentence Completion, Reading Comprehension, Antonyms and Analogies and (3) the Quantitative Section of 45 minutes duration that has in all 28 questions involving Quantitative Comparison and Problem Solving.
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