About GRE®

GRE stands for Graduate Record Examination. Most top ranked global universities accept GRE as an admission test for the graduate programs from technical Masters to masters in arts to even MBA. Graduate applicants from all around the world who are interested in pursuing a master’s, MBA, specialized master’s in business or doctoral degree take the GRE General Test. The GRE General Test, created and administered by Educational Testing Service (ETS), measures verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning and analytical writing skills. If you plan to pursue an MS, MEM (Masters in Engineering Management) or MFE (Masters in Financial Engineering), then GRE is a qualifying test that you will need to take.

Global GRE takers: Over 0.6 million applicants take the GRE each year.

What makes GRE an awesome test:

  • Flexibility to choose the test date and time – GRE is held all through the year
  • GRE score validity – Your scores are valid for 5 years
  • GRE retake – You can retake the GRE after 21 days from the previous attempt if you are unhappy with your performance
  • GRE maximum attempts – You can take up to 5 attempts in a year
  • GRE Score Select – You can select a specific score from the past attempts and have its score reported to universities
  • You can view your scores before reporting it to a university
  • GRE score cancelation – You are allowed to cancel an attempt if you are not happy with your performance

New GRE® Format

The total testing time for the revised GRE® test is around 3 hours and 45 minutes. There are six sections with a 10-minute break following the third section.

  • One Analytical Writing section with two separately timed writing tasks
  • Two Verbal Reasoning sections
  • Two Quantitative Reasoning sections
  • One unscored section, typically a Verbal Reasoning or Quantitative Reasoning section, that may appear at any point in the test.
Section Number of Questions Allotted Time
Analytical Writing
(1 section with 2
separately timed tasks)		 1 “Analyse an Issue” task and 30 minutes per task
1 “Analyse an Argument” task
Verbal Reasoning
(2 sections)		 Approximately 20 questions per section 30 minutes per section
Quantitative Reasoning
(2 sections)		 Approximately 20 questions per section 35 minutes per section
Unscored* Varies Varies
Research** Varies Varies

The verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning and unscored sections can appear in any sequence.

The test features a score scale that reports the Verbal Reasoning and Quantitative Reasoning scores on a 130–170 score scale, in 1-point increments.*An unidentified unscored section that does not count towards a score may be included and may appear in any order after the Analytical Writing section.

**An identified research section may be included in place of the unscored section. The research section will always appear at the end of the test. Questions in this section are included for the purpose of ETS research and will not count towards the test taker’s score.

There is a 10-minute break following the third section, and a 1-minute break between the other test sections.

GRE Eligibility Criteria

There is no age and qualification based eligibility criteria to take the GRE. The universities accepting a GRE score will however have pre-defined eligibility criteria. Kindly check university websites before applying.