The Statistics of GRE Content?

[mrs12]

I'm not sure if this information is readily out there, but I thought I'd throw the question to GradCafe and see what comes up. When it comes to prepping for an exam like the GRE, often what one might do is look at the statistics of the content and format of the test and come up with priorities for studying or taking the test itself. For instance, if I know that I want a specific quant score, and I know roughly how many questions I'd need to achieve that score -- one could do some calculations based on the test itself. Say I know I'm better at Geometry, and that I, perhaps, don't have enough time to study higher aspects in Algebra before the test. I might then try to estimate how many Geometry questions are in the quant section in general, and try to estimate the low-hanging fruit from the rest of the quant section to focus my studying on, things that would take less time to brush up on or learn. So I could target both my studying and my test-taking to the parts that are easiest or that I was better able to prepare for within the time-constraints.

Is this a method people use when planning their prep work or when taking the test? If so, where did you come across more detailed information on the contents of the GRE? I've yet to find much more than the most basic detailings, which isn't enough to base this sort of theory off of, and while I doubt that any such details are set in stone or heavily advertised I was curious if there were formal or informal statistics on this sort of thing.

[scientific]

I'm not  sure that there's hard data on this, especially if you're taking the electronic test. As I understand it, the electronic test has "levels" so if you do poorly in say algebra 2 questions, it puts you into a lower level with algebra 1 questions, but you won't be able to get a top score.... each level has a "capped" max score. I'm not sure if that's still true, but that's what I read (I don't have the books I used so I can't verify that's what it said).

 

I think there's lots of data about what's on the test in general (ie., basic stats is on there, lots of percents stuff, and basic geometry) and the best thing you can do is just practice, unfortunately. If you are particularly struggling with time, I thought the official guides were good with little tricks and tips.

[LookingforMM]

The way the GRE is organized, there are two sections each of verbal and quantitative questions, each giving you about a half hour (30 min for verbal, 35 min for quant).  How well one does on the first of each type of section determines the difficulty level of the second section.  This doesn't mean that the first few questions lock you into some specific result, because it doesn't calculate anything until you finish the section.

Each question within a section is worth the same amount, but that amount is related to the difficulty of the section.  The first section of each type will always be of medium difficulty, and the second will be harder, the same, or easier depending on how you do.

Question types tend to be pretty evenly distributed, with a few algebra, a few statistics, a few geometry, and so on.  You can use the official site to see the types of questions that you can expect on the test.  Take the free practice tests, too, to get a sense of what your scores will be.

(My scores were 169V/160Q/5.5AW)

Edited December 12, 2017 by LookingforMM

[ltr317]

In addition, the first verbal and quantitative section has questions with levels of difficulty from 1-5, so it's a complicated algorithm.