Do Harder Questions Count for More or Not?

[TK2]

Since I'm down the GRE rabbit hole now, here's one thing I can't figure out. Information in various guides seems to be contradictory, even within the same guide. 

 

One the one hand - they clearly state that all questions count equally (and encourage skimming through and getting all easy questions first as a strategy.)

But - they also state that a high number of correct answers in the first section will define the level of difficulty offered in the second section.

And - finally, that the highest scores can only be earned by having access to, and correctly answering, the most difficult questions. 

 

So what's going on here? Do different questions factor differently? In the calculation of scores when normalized on the curve only? Or they all count the same in the first section and then are adjusted in the second section? What?

I'm pretty sure its meaningless in terms of taking the test, i'm just obsessively curious at this point, possibly due to the level of loathing i'm developing for this thing. The opposite of hate being not love but indifference. 

[celaena23]

Yes the harder questions do count. If you check the Official ETS GRE guide it has two score cards that convert your raw score. The more questions you answer correctly in the first section, you are more likely to get on par, hard questions in the next section, ultimately when converting your raw score, even if you get, say, three questions wrong, you can still get 170 if the sections are harder. 

If you don't answer your first section very well, you will probably get easier questions and even if you answer one question wrong, you cannot get 170. That's the difference.

[TakeruK]

The basic idea is that you will get a higher score if you:1) provide correct answers and 2) provide correct answers to difficult questions.

Please make sure you are reading consistent advice because the General GRE and Subject GRE tests are scored differently. Also, there may be some guides still floating around that discuss the "old" GRE (prior to August 2011), where the test was adaptive at the question level (that is, whether you get question #15 correct determines the difficulty of question #16 etc.). Now the test is adaptive to each section. This means there are only two difficulty levels for each category (Verbal vs. Quant.). All the questions within a single section (difficulty level) are worth exactly the same. As @celaena23 says, the difficulty of the second section depends on your performance on the first section. After you complete the test, the software scores each of your sections and assigns you a score based on how many correct answers and the difficulty level of your two sections.

Source: https://www.ets.org/gre/revised_general/scores/how/

[coffeecupanalogy]

As far as I know, the difficulty of the second section (and maybe third section) depends on your performance on the first section. I believe that's the reason some study guides have really hard practice problems, like Magoosh you can start with easy and medium levels of difficulty for practice problems, and gradually start with the hard and very hard levels. Seems like the quant problems on the GRE are not as difficult as those levels, still practicing those at that level of difficulty really prepares you in case the second section is difficult in the GRE. 

[TK2]

Thanks guys, I think that more or less clears that up - the number of correct answers in an overall harder section will count for more than a similar number of correct answers in an easy section, but each individual question counts for the same amount of points within the section, regardless of its difficulty level.

I hate knowing that blowing the first section probably means I've automatically blown a lot of the second on as well. No wonder its not stressed too much in guide books. 

[TakeruK]

4 hours ago, TK2 said:

Thanks guys, I think that more or less clears that up - the number of correct answers in an overall harder section will count for more than a similar number of correct answers in an easy section, but each individual question counts for the same amount of points within the section, regardless of its difficulty level.

I hate knowing that blowing the first section probably means I've automatically blown a lot of the second on as well. No wonder its not stressed too much in guide books. 

Yes that's right  

I think the new way is better. When I took the old test, it was just one giant session and since every question's difficulty is based on how you are currently doing, this means that if you screw up the first 5 questions, it's bad news. And the scoring was even more opaque because they probably did wait for X questions before they started changing the difficulty but you don't know what X is. And, because each question is adaptive (instead of by section), you can't skip questions at all--you must answer each one before getting the next one.