The concept of GRE adaptive tests is often foreign to most students thinking about preparing for the GRE. Understanding the GRE scoring algorithm and GRE scoring methodology is essential for building a strategy to test nature. If you’ve never taken a GRE adaptive test, don’t let it intimidate you. With proper practice, you will learn to choose the path of your GRE test.
What is a GRE adaptive test?
GRE adaptive test has specifically designed algorithms that allow the test to set the types of questions presented as the test-taker progresses. It means that the test will ‘choose’ the upcoming questions\’ difficulty and nature based on your performance.
How is the GRE Adaptive Test?
The GRE is well-known to be an adaptive test in its computer-delivered format. However, this adaptability only applies to each section of the GRE. It means that, instead of determining the test difficulty on a question-by-question basis, the GRE will set the difficulty on a section-by-section basis. Consequently, the raw scores get scaled accordingly based on the difficulty of the questions you end up with. The more complex the section, the more weight it bears on your overall score. However, this only applies within each academic area. Your performance in the GRE Verbal Reasoning section will not influence the questions\’ difficulty in your GRE Quantitive Reasoning section.
In general, the first sections of both Quant and Verbal usually are of average difficulty. Your performance in these first sections opens three possibilities for the second section. The second section can be Easy, Medium, or Hard. It totally depends on how many correct answers you get in the prior sections.
How do the scoring scales vary?
Each section of the GRE comprises 20 questions, both in Verbal and Quant.
Usually, you need to get 15 questions correct in the first section to get a difficult question in the next. An average performance in the first section will get you a medium difficulty question in the second section. Logically, a poor performance will end up in an easy second section.
The scaling of the raw scores varies from test to test. However, you will get a more significant weightage on each correct answer in a challenging section than that in a medium difficulty section. The weightage for a correct answer in an accessible section is the least.
The path towards the best possible GRE score would be to ensure a hard question in the second sections of both Verbal and Quant.
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