GRE practice test: GRE test prep courses and GRE practice questions
The GRE got shorter in September 2023 and a surprising amount of prep material never caught up. If your practice test has an unscored experimental section and an Analyze an Argument essay, it is testing you on a format ETS retired.
- Built on the shorter GRE: 1 hour 58 minutes, five scored sections, no experimental section
- Every answer choice explained, including why the trap answer is tempting
- Quant drilled by topic, because the Quant percentile ceiling is unforgiving
Questions are generated on each exam's current published format, verified August 2026. Plans from $9/mo, cancel anytime.
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The short answer
The current GRE General Test takes 1 hour and 58 minutes: one 30-minute Analytical Writing essay, two Verbal sections (12 and 15 questions) and two Quantitative sections (12 and 15 questions). It has no unscored experimental section, which is the single most common error in GRE prep material still published today. Verbal and Quant are scored 130 to 170 and the test is section-level adaptive: your performance on the first section of a measure determines the difficulty of the second. Aspirants.ai generates unlimited practice on this format from $9 a month.
Last updated July 2026
Work the questions
GRE practice questions with answers and explanations
Eight questions split the way the scored sections split, four Verbal and four Quantitative, and written in the formats the current GRE actually uses, including quantitative comparison and sentence equivalence. They are written in the style of the exam, not copied from it.
Question 1 · Verbal: text completion
Although the commission's report was widely praised for its thoroughness, several economists faulted its central recommendation as ______, noting that it drew sweeping conclusions from a single quarter of data. Select the word that best completes the sentence.
- A. exhaustive
- B. precipitate
- C. meticulous
- D. equivocal
- E. derivative
Show the answer and explanation Answer
B. precipitate
Read the clause after the comma before you look at the options, because it defines the blank: sweeping conclusions from one quarter of data is a judgment made too quickly. Precipitate means hasty or done without sufficient deliberation, which is exactly that. Exhaustive and meticulous both mean careful and complete, and they would agree with the praise in the first clause rather than with the criticism the word "faulted" signals. Equivocal means deliberately ambiguous, which is a different complaint. Derivative means unoriginal, and nothing here suggests the recommendation was borrowed. The word "Although" tells you the two halves of the sentence pull in opposite directions.
Question 2 · Verbal: sentence equivalence
Far from being ______, the senator's proposal borrowed heavily from a bill that had been introduced a decade earlier and quietly abandoned. Select the TWO answer choices that best complete the sentence and produce completed sentences alike in meaning.
- A. derivative
- B. novel
- C. original
- D. contentious
- E. pragmatic
- F. unpopular
Show the answer and explanation Answer
B. novel and C. original
Sentence equivalence has one rule people forget: you need two words that produce sentences with the same meaning, not simply two words that fit. "Far from being" reverses the blank, so the sentence says the proposal was not new, and novel and original are near synonyms that both deliver that. Derivative is the trap, because it describes the proposal accurately, but "far from being derivative" would say the opposite of what the rest of the sentence establishes. Contentious, pragmatic and unpopular each fit grammatically and none has a partner among the remaining choices, which is the fastest way to eliminate them.
Question 3 · Verbal: reading comprehension
Passage: For decades, textbooks attributed the decline of the region's oyster beds to overharvesting alone. Recent sediment cores complicate that account. They show that the beds were already thinning several decades before commercial dredging began, coinciding with a documented rise in upstream agriculture and the runoff it produced. The finding does not exonerate the dredging fleets, whose records show extraction at rates the beds could not sustain. It does suggest that the fleets arrived at a fishery that was already under stress. Question: the author mentions the extraction records primarily in order to do what?
- A. Establish that dredging was the sole cause of the decline
- B. Prevent the new evidence from being read as absolving the dredging fleets
- C. Question the reliability of the sediment cores
- D. Argue that upstream agriculture had no measurable effect
Show the answer and explanation Answer
B. Prevent the new evidence from being read as absolving the dredging fleets
Purpose questions ask what a detail is doing, not what it says. The sentence begins "The finding does not exonerate," which announces that the author is heading off a misreading of the evidence just presented, and the extraction records are the support for that. Option A overstates the author's position and contradicts the whole point of the passage, which is that two causes overlap. Option C reverses the argument, since the author accepts the cores as reliable and builds on them. Option D is contradicted directly by the sentence about runoff. On this question type, the answer almost always paraphrases the function of the sentence, not its content.
Question 4 · Verbal: text completion, two blanks
The curator's decision to hang the forgeries beside the authenticated works struck some visitors as (i) ______, but she defended it as a way of making explicit the (ii) ______ that connoisseurship usually keeps hidden. Blank (i): A. perverse, B. conventional, C. overdue. Blank (ii): D. consensus, E. uncertainty, F. expense.
- A and D
- A and E
- B and E
- C and F
Show the answer and explanation Answer
A and E
Two-blank text completions are scored all or nothing, so work the blank with the stronger clue first. Blank (ii) has one: connoisseurship is the practice of judging authenticity, and what it keeps hidden is how much doubt is involved, so uncertainty fits and consensus is its opposite. Expense is unrelated to anything in the sentence. That settles blank (i) through the word "but," which sets the visitors' reaction against the curator's defense: they found it strange, so perverse works. Conventional would mean they found it ordinary, which gives nothing to defend, and overdue would mean they approved.
Question 5 · Quant: quantitative comparison
Quantity A: 3 to the power of 40. Quantity B: 9 to the power of 20. Which of the following is true?
- A. Quantity A is greater
- B. Quantity B is greater
- C. The two quantities are equal
- D. The relationship cannot be determined from the information given
Show the answer and explanation Answer
C. The two quantities are equal
Never try to compute large powers on this question type. Rewrite both quantities on a common base instead: 9 is 3 squared, so 9 to the twentieth is 3 squared, all raised to the twentieth, which is 3 to the fortieth. The two expressions are the same number written two ways. The habit worth building is to look for a shared base, a common factor or an algebraic simplification before you reach for arithmetic, because quantitative comparison rewards recognizing structure. Also remember that option D can never be correct when both quantities are specific numbers with no variables in them.
Question 6 · Quant: problem solving
The average (arithmetic mean) of five numbers is 12. When one number is removed, the average of the remaining four is 13. What is the value of the number that was removed?
- A. 4
- B. 8
- C. 10
- D. 11
- E. 14
Show the answer and explanation Answer
B. 8
Convert averages into sums immediately, because sums are what you can actually manipulate. Five numbers averaging 12 have a total of 60. Four numbers averaging 13 have a total of 52. The removed number is the difference, 60 minus 52, which is 8. The intuition check is worth doing too: taking a number out raised the average, so the number removed had to be below the original average of 12, which eliminates options D and E before any arithmetic. This "average to sum and back" move solves the large majority of GRE mean questions, including the ones that look far more complicated.
Question 7 · Quant: percent change
A retailer raises the price of an item by 20 percent, then later reduces the new price by 20 percent. Compared with the original price, the final price is which of the following?
- A. 4 percent higher
- B. Unchanged
- C. 4 percent lower
- D. 20 percent lower
- E. 40 percent lower
Show the answer and explanation Answer
C. 4 percent lower
Successive percent changes multiply, they do not add, and this question exists to catch people who cancel the two twenties. Pick 100 as the starting price because the arithmetic is clean. A 20 percent increase gives 120. A 20 percent decrease from 120 removes 24, leaving 96, which is 4 percent below the original. The reason it lands lower is that the second percentage is taken from a larger base than the first. As a shortcut, multiply the factors: 1.20 times 0.80 equals 0.96, and a factor of 0.96 is a 4 percent decrease. The order of the two changes makes no difference to the result.
Question 8 · Quant: sets and counting
In a group of 40 students, 25 study Spanish, 18 study French and 8 study both languages. How many students study neither language?
- A. 3
- B. 5
- C. 7
- D. 9
- E. 15
Show the answer and explanation Answer
B. 5
Use the inclusion and exclusion principle: the number studying at least one language is 25 plus 18 minus 8, which is 35, because the 8 students taking both were counted in each of the first two figures and must be subtracted once. Subtract that from the group of 40 and 5 students study neither. The most common error is to add 25 and 18 to get 43, notice it exceeds 40, and assume the question is flawed. A two-circle Venn diagram makes the structure obvious: 17 Spanish only, 8 both, 10 French only, and whatever is left over sits outside both circles.
These eight are a sample. Inside Aspirants.ai you can generate unlimited GRE practice questions across Verbal Reasoning and Quantitative Reasoning, in every question format on the current test, with the reasoning behind each answer choice.
Generate more questions freeThe shorter GRE, section by section
ETS cut the GRE from 3 hours 45 minutes to 1 hour 58 minutes in September 2023, and it is now the only format offered. Analytical Writing always comes first and is a single Analyze an Issue task. The Analyze an Argument essay is gone. After that, Verbal and Quant can appear in any order. Every section you see is scored, which changes how you should pace yourself: on the old GRE you could tell yourself a bad section might be the experimental one. That excuse no longer exists.
- Analytical Writing: one Analyze an Issue essay, 30 minutes
- Verbal Reasoning: 12 questions in 18 minutes, then 15 questions in 23 minutes
- Quantitative Reasoning: 12 questions in 21 minutes, then 15 questions in 26 minutes
- No unscored experimental section, and no Analyze an Argument task
How section-level adaptivity actually works
The GRE is not question-adaptive like the NCLEX. It is section-adaptive: your performance on the first Verbal section decides the difficulty of the second Verbal section, and the same holds for Quant. This has a practical consequence people miss. The first section of each measure disproportionately sets your ceiling, because it determines which difficulty tier you are routed into. Within a section you can skip a question, come back to it, and change your answers freely.
- First section of a measure sets the difficulty tier of the second
- You can move freely within a section: skip, return, and revise
- Raw scores are equated to account for form difficulty and the adaptive routing
- A harder second section is a good sign, not a bad one
What is a good GRE score, and why Quant percentiles are brutal
This is where GRE prep advice goes badly wrong. Verbal and Quant use the identical 130 to 170 scale, so they look interchangeable. They are not. On the current ETS reference group the Verbal mean is 151.4 and the Quant mean is 157.6. A perfect 170 on Quant is only the 89th percentile, which means a 90th percentile Quant score does not exist. On Verbal, a 163 already reaches the 90th. The GRE pool is packed with engineering, computer science and physical science applicants who cluster against the Quant ceiling, so the scale runs out before the population does.
- Verbal mean 151.4, Quant mean 157.6, Analytical Writing mean 3.46
- Quant: 170 is the 89th percentile, 165 the 67th, 160 the 50th
- Verbal: 170 is the 99th percentile, 165 the 95th, 163 the 90th
- Analytical Writing: a 4.5 is the 85th percentile and a 5.0 the 93rd
How to practice for the shorter GRE
A shorter test punishes slow starts. With 12 questions in 18 minutes on the first Verbal section, losing four minutes to one stubborn question costs you a fifth of the section that routes your difficulty tier. Practice triage before you practice content: decide in 20 seconds whether a question is worth your time, and be willing to guess and move. Then review every miss properly, because on a 27-question measure each individual question is worth far more than it was on the old format.
GRE practice questions by question type
Drill by type rather than by random mixed sets. On Verbal, text completion and sentence equivalence reward finding the structural signal word first, before you look at any answer choice. On Quant, quantitative comparison is its own skill: answer D is only correct when the relationship genuinely varies, and students pick it far too often out of uncertainty rather than because the value actually changes.
- Text completion and sentence equivalence: find the signal word, predict, then match
- Reading comprehension: main purpose, inference and author attitude
- Quantitative comparison: the four-option format with its own logic
- Problem solving and data interpretation across algebra, geometry and statistics
Compare the options
GRE prep options compared
What each route costs in the US and what it actually delivers, including where paying more genuinely helps.
| Option | Typical US cost | What you get | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| ETS official free tools | Free | Two official POWERPREP practice tests on the real interface. The most accurate score predictor available, and limited in volume. | Your baseline and your final dress rehearsal |
| Prep books | About $20 to $50 | A full curriculum and practice sets. Verify the edition covers the shorter GRE. | Self-directed study on a budget |
| On-demand video course | Roughly $200 to $1,500 | Recorded lessons, a large question bank and analytics. Completion is on you. | Students who want a structured syllabus |
| Private GRE tutor | About $100 to $300+ per hour | One-on-one diagnosis of your specific errors. Most effective, and by far the most expensive. | Breaking a plateau when you have budget |
| Aspirants.ai AI tutor | From $9/mo | Unlimited Verbal and Quant practice on the shorter format, every answer explained, 24x7 questions answered. | High-volume practice between official POWERPREP tests |
The GRE General Test fee in the US is $220, effective July 1, 2024 and subject to change. Verify current pricing at ets.org before you register.
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Honest answers
GRE practice test, answered straight.
The GRE General Test takes 1 hour and 58 minutes. That is one 30-minute Analytical Writing essay, two Verbal sections totalling 27 questions in 41 minutes, and two Quantitative sections totalling 27 questions in 47 minutes. ETS shortened it from 3 hours 45 minutes in September 2023.
No. The shorter GRE has no unscored experimental section. ETS own information bulletin lists the unidentified unscored section only under the structure used before September 22, 2023. Every section on the current test is scored, so treat all of them as counting.
It depends on your program, but the reference points are a Verbal mean of 151.4 and a Quant mean of 157.6. Because the applicant pool is quant-heavy, the scales are not comparable: a 163 Verbal is the 90th percentile while a perfect 170 Quant reaches only the 89th. Judge your score against your target programs.
Yes, but at the section level rather than the question level. Your performance on the first Verbal section determines the difficulty of the second Verbal section, and the same applies to Quant. Within any single section you can skip questions, return to them, and change answers freely.
The GRE General Test costs $220 in the United States, a fee effective July 1, 2024. That includes four score reports sent on test day. Rescheduling costs $55, additional score reports are $40 each, and an Analytical Writing score review is $60.
You can take the GRE once every 21 days, up to five times in any rolling 12-month period. Cancelled scores still count against that limit. Scores stay reportable for five years after your test date.
Usually yes. ETS reports that 92% of business schools accept the GRE, including every top-ranked MBA program, and that 44% of the incoming Class of 2027 at Harvard Business School and Stanford GSB submitted GRE scores. Those figures come from ETS itself, so confirm with each program directly.
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