GRE Exam Guide: Format, Sections and Timing

The GRE General Test is the admissions exam accepted by thousands of graduate, business and law programs worldwide. ETS builds and delivers it. The current version takes about 1 hour 58 minutes of testing time. It puts applicants from different universities, countries and majors on one common scale.

The exam holds five sections: one writing task, two Verbal Reasoning sections and two Quantitative Reasoning sections. This guide covers what each section contains and how much time you get for it. It also explains how the adaptive design works and what changed when ETS shortened the test in September 2023. Use the timing tables to set your pacing before your first practice test.

What the GRE Measures

ETS built the GRE around four skill areas: verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, critical thinking and analytical writing. ETS describes these as the skills needed for graduate, business and law programs. The exam rewards reasoning under time pressure rather than recall of a syllabus. Nothing on it checks memorized course content from a specific degree, so a physics major and a history major face the same questions.

Two abilities decide most scores: reading dense text quickly, and handling arithmetic, algebra and data interpretation without a long setup. Both improve with repetition on the exact question formats ETS uses. Our section guides break down every question type in detail. The drills on our GRE page let you practice one type at a time, free and with no signup.

Who Requires the GRE

Acceptance reaches well beyond traditional graduate departments. Business schools and law schools take GRE scores alongside their own admissions tests. If you're weighing options, compare the GRE against the GMAT for business school admissions. The counts below cover programs worldwide. ETS reports the following institution numbers.

• Thousands of graduate programs worldwide
• More than 1,300 business schools
• More than 100 ABA-approved law schools

Requirements differ by program and change from year to year. Some programs require a score, some treat it as optional, and some ignore it. Confirm the requirement on each program's own admissions page before you register for a test date. Note the score deadline in the same visit and work backward to pick your test date.

GRE Format and Timing

The shortened GRE runs about 1 hour 58 minutes of testing time. Five sections fill it: one essay, two Verbal Reasoning sections and two Quantitative Reasoning sections. ETS publishes the section counts and time limits below.

Add the five limits together and you reach 118 minutes, matching the published total of about 1 hour 58 minutes. Every one of those 54 questions counts toward your score, because the exam no longer carries an unscored section. Nothing you answer is thrown out as experimental. Work through each section at the pace its own limit allows.

Section Order on Test Day

Analytical Writing always comes first. ETS places the Verbal and Quantitative sections in any order after the essay, so the section following your writing task is not fixed. You learn your order only when the sections load on screen.

Plan for both outcomes. Warm up with a few verbal questions and a few quant questions before you sit down, so neither subject is unfamiliar in the section right after 30 minutes of writing. Keep the warm-up short and easy, because the goal is readiness rather than extra study.

Pacing per Question

Divide each section limit by its question count and you get the pace you have to hold. The table below shows the average per question for all four scored sections. Compare it against your own timing after every practice section.

Quant hands you roughly 15 more seconds per question than Verbal. Neither margin leaves room to stall. Two questions at four minutes each cost you the time for three others. Answer a stalled question with your best available choice and move to the next one.

Test Day Details and Breaks

ETS keeps current test day details, including any scheduled break, on its official test structure page. Read it in the week before your test date so the on-screen flow holds no surprises. Third-party summaries often describe the older, longer format, so use the ETS page for the current answer. Check it again if your test date moves by several months.

Analytical Writing

Analytical Writing is one 30 minute task: Analyze an Issue. ETS removed the second writing task, Analyze an Argument, in the September 2023 shortening. One essay now carries the entire writing score, and it always runs before any Verbal or Quantitative section.

You get one prompt and one block of 30 minutes to plan, write and check your essay. A repeatable routine matters more than inspiration here: read the prompt, pick a position, list your examples, then write. Leave two or three minutes at the end for a read-through. Our GRE Analytical Writing guide covers prompt types, essay structure and the scoring criteria.

Verbal Reasoning

Verbal Reasoning is two sections, 27 questions and 41 minutes in total. The first section holds 12 questions in 18 minutes and the second holds 15 questions in 23 minutes. The second section is longer on both counts, so your stamina matters more in the back half. Both sections feed the same Verbal measure.

The two sections do not sit back to back by default, since Quant sections mix into the order. Time each Verbal section separately, because the limits and question counts differ. Our GRE Verbal Reasoning guide breaks down the question types and the strategy for each.

Quantitative Reasoning

Quantitative Reasoning is two sections, 27 questions and 47 minutes in total: 12 questions in 21 minutes, then 15 questions in 26 minutes. The question count matches Verbal exactly. The time limits do not, and the extra minutes change how you pace each section.

Quant carries six more minutes than Verbal for the same 27 questions, which reflects the working time arithmetic and algebra need. The extra minutes still leave an average under two minutes per question. Our GRE Quantitative Reasoning guide covers the content areas and the question formats.

How Section-Level Adaptivity Works

Both Verbal and Quantitative Reasoning adapt, but not question by question. ETS explains the design as section-level adaptive: your performance on the first section of a measure decides the difficulty of the second section of the same measure. The choice happens once per measure, between the two sections.

Three consequences follow from the design. Each one changes how you practice and how you read your own test day experience. Keep them in mind before you judge a section while you sit in it.

• Your first Verbal section decides which second Verbal section you receive, and your first Quant section decides which second Quant section you receive. The two measures work independently.
• One wrong answer does not change the next question inside the same section. The questions in front of you are fixed once the section starts.
• A second section feeling harder than the first is the expected result of strong performance, not a warning sign. Answer it the same way you answered the first.

Practice the same way. Take full sections against the real clock instead of loose sets of questions, because the first section of each measure sets up the second. Our GRE mocks follow the same two-section structure for both measures, so the pattern is familiar before test day.

What Changed in September 2023

ETS announced the shortened GRE in May 2023 and opened registration for test dates from September 22, 2023. The update cut the test to under two hours without touching the score scale. Four changes matter for your prep.

• Total testing time dropped to under two hours, roughly half the length of the previous version.
• The Analyze an Argument writing task was removed, leaving a single Analyze an Issue task.
• The unscored experimental section was removed, so every question you see counts.
• The score scale stayed the same, so scores earned before and after the change remain comparable.

Old prep books and forum threads describing a longer test with an extra unscored section no longer match the exam. Check the publication date on any GRE material before you trust its timing advice. Compare its section counts and time limits against the table above. Anything describing two writing tasks predates the current format.

Scoring and Score Goals

Verbal and Quantitative Reasoning produce separate scaled scores, and Analytical Writing produces its own score. ETS kept the score scale unchanged through the 2023 shortening, so a score from the older format lines up with one from the current format. Programs reading applications from both formats compare the numbers directly.

Our GRE scoring guide covers the scales, how raw performance maps to scaled scores, and what programs look for. To set a target and work out what it takes to reach it, run the numbers through our GRE score calculator. Both are free and need no signup. For official percentile tables, go to the ETS score pages linked below.

How to Use This Guide

Use this overview in a fixed order. Each step depends on the one before it. Skipping the baseline test turns every later drill choice into guesswork.

1. Read the three section guides: Verbal Reasoning, Quantitative Reasoning and Analytical Writing.
2. Take one full-length practice test under real timing to get a baseline.
3. Sort your errors by question type, then drill the weakest types in short sets.
4. Re-time yourself against the pacing table above until each section fits its limit.
5. Check your target against our score calculator and repeat the cycle.

Our full-length GRE mocks, section practice and question-type drills sit on the GRE practice page. Everything is free with no signup. Every mock uses the real section counts and time limits from this guide, so your practice pacing transfers straight to test day. Start with one full mock, then drill the question types where you lost the most points.

Sources

Every number, date and policy in this guide comes from the ETS pages below.

• ETS: GRE General Test Structure
• ETS: About the GRE General Test
• ETS: The GRE Tests
• ETS: Understanding Your GRE General Test Scores
• ETS: Shorter GRE Test Coming September 2023