brick

As one who writes for a living, I have to agree that GRE passages are convoluted or what some refer to as "dense." In almost all cases, they lack clarity on first blush; however, a test - by its very nature - must be this way. The measure of a test's success, though, is ensuring passages have only one logical interpretation. In my limited experience, the GRE succeeds in this regard; the underlying reasoning the passages represent is not convoluted, is quite simple, and can generally be interpreted correctly in only one way. It is the way in which the underlying reasoning is expressed in the writing that *is* (intentionally) more difficult to grasp. As for the oft-cited example in this thread... "The increase in the numbers of married women employed outside the home in the twentieth century had less to do with the mechanization of housework and an increase in leisure time for these women than it did with their own economic necessity and with high marriage rates that shrank the available pool of single women workers, previously, in many cases, the only women employers would hire." ...the argument is simple, but it is presented in a manner more difficult to comprehend than is necessary. (The portions I struckthrough could be eliminated without losing any meaning while also decreasing the number of words to stumble over.) Instead of making it easier to understand, I will make it even more complicated: "The lack of a decrease, and even the lack of a maintenance of a steady state, in the numbers of non-single women employed outside the home in the twentieth century had less to do with the proliferation of electrical appliances throughout homes in the Western world, a decrease in the amount of time required to do household work -- which typically belonged to the distaff's side -- and an increase in leisure time than it did with their perception of economic need and with the fact that fewer women were remaining single, a phenomenon that shrank the availability of employers' previously-relied-upon pool of single women workers, which were often the only women those employers would hire." The underlying idea is the same, but the passage is even more verbose and (a bit) more convoluted than the original. The point is that the idea is obscured by a rambling string of words and backwardly-worded phrases like "lack of a decrease", "non-single women", and "fewer women were remaining single". The GRE tests a person's ability to comprehend stuff that's not easily comprehensible. ...you could make the same argument about "unfairness" for the GRE's choice of vocabular in the 'fill in the blank' portions of the test: if the test's aim is to measure verbal reasoning, why provide answer choices comprising words you will NEVER see or use again in your life? Well, because most people will get the right answers if simple vocab is used. The reasoning aspect of the questions isn't difficult -- the vocab is. Thus, the GRE also tests vocabulary. All in all, if you can't get over all this and just suck it up, you're going to suck at life. Unless you start your own commune.