What Should You Do About the GRE's Adaptability and How Does it Work?

The GRE is an adaptive test, which means that the questions you are given on it change based on how well you perform. Early on, you'll see easier questions if you successfully answer more of them. You will see simpler questions if you successfully answer fewer of them. But how exactly does this operate, and what does the adaptive structure of the GRE entail for you as you're planning your test-taking approach?

What “adaptive” means on the GRE

First, unlike some other adaptive tests (such as the GMAT), the GRE is not adaptive at the level of the question but at the level of the section. Your Quantitative and Verbal scores, which each range from 130 to 170, are based on two sections each: two math sections and two verbal sections. Your first math section will be of moderate difficulty, as will your first verbal section. Depending on how you perform on this first section, you will either see a harder, medium, or easier second section. In other words, the questions within each section do not change depending on whether you’re answering them correctly or not; only the second full set of 20 questions does.  

Here’s how you want to think about it: If you get a harder second section, that’s a good thing! There is now a floor, so to speak, below which you will not score. You’ve earned yourself a safety net, score-wise! Inversely, if you wind up with the easier second section, the opposite is true: You have now capped your score—no matter how well you do on the second section, you will not score above a certain threshold at this point. (I cannot tell you what that threshold is—sorry; it’s not public knowledge.) For this reason, you want a harder second section.  

How do you get a harder second section?

Now that you know you want a harder second section, how do you earn one? One way and one way only: You need to answer more questions correctly. It’s a numbers game. The more questions you get right, the better you do. This is true whether the questions are considered easy or hard. Hard questions are not given more weight than easier questions. Let me say that again—the way you get a harder second section is the same way you get a higher score: You answer as many questions as possible correctly.  

So, this raises the question of how you answer as many questions correctly as possible. Of course, this is where studying comes in. But apart from studying, there are some strategies that you can deploy in real-time during the test.  

First, know that the questions are not organized from easy to hard within the section. They’re all mixed up. You could very well see a really easy question number 19 just as you could see a really difficult question number 3. Both of these questions “count” the same amount. The last thing you want to do is spend so much time working on question 3 that you don’t make it to question 19 and therefore miss out on nailing that easy point! To this end, here are a few rules of thumb:

1. Don’t overinvest in a particular question. Try not to spend over two minutes on a given question, as a general matter. (You’ll spend even less time on easier problems, sometimes much less, depending on the section—verbal or quant—and problem type. Our courses and study materials go into just how long you should plan to spend on various question types, on average.)  

2. Make sure to preview every question so that you ensure you get your “easy” points. If you don’t even glance at a problem, you won’t know if it was an easy one you might have quickly solved.  

3. Guess on any problems you don’t get to. By leaving blanks, you simply get the problem wrong. There is no penalty, in other words, for guessing. Leave nothing blank!

Something to look out for as you get better at the GRE

Finally, a word of warning. One thing to look out for both as you’re studying and as you’re taking the exam is that, because of the adaptive nature of the exam, doing better can feel worse. As you improve, and thus earn yourself more challenging problems, you may have the (false) sense that you’re actually regressing because the test feels harder. But you aren’t! You’re just seeing tougher programs as a reward for answering more earlier problems correctly. Keeping this in mind can help prevent you from feeling discouraged as your GRE skills improve.

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