Welcome
to the GRE CAT
Information
provided by Kaplan Test Prep
How
Does the CAT Work?
The
Paper & Pencil GRE is history.
Instead of presenting a preset mixture of easy,
medium, and hard questions the way traditional paper &
pencil tests do, the GRE CAT selects questions for you based on
your performance. It begins with a question of average
difficulty. If you get that question right, the computer shows
you a harder question next — if you get it wrong, the CAT
gives you an easier question. So if you keep getting questions
correct, the questions will increase in difficulty. If you slip
and make some mistakes, the test will adjust and start giving
you easier problems. The CAT literally adapts to your
performance this way.
A
CAT by definition provides everyone with a different mix of easy
and hard questions. The very purpose of the adaptive format is
to determine your score based on the level at which you answer
questions correctly about 50 percent of the time. That means
that the overall number you get right is not as important as the
level at which you start getting about half the questions wrong.
On
the CAT, you see only one question at a time, and once you
answer a question it's part of your score, for better or worse.
You can't go back to a question later on. That means you cannot
skip around within a section and do questions in the order that
you prefer. Instead, you have to do your best to get a question
right the first time you see it.
GRE
CAT questions are not all worth the same to your score. How much
a question raises or lowers your score depends on when the
question appears in a section. A question early on in a CAT
section will affect your score more, for better or worse, than
one later on. That's because the computer makes larger scoring
jumps in the beginning of a section to approximate your scoring
level--it then makes smaller jumps as it fine-tunes your score.
You can only get a high score if you answer enough medium
problems correctly to see the hard problems.
GRE
CAT Sections & Structure
The GRE CAT has three scored sections: Verbal, Quantitative
(Math), and Analytical. The scored sections can be presented in
any order, and have the following basic format:
| Section |
Time |
Questions |
| Verbal |
30 minutes |
30 questions |
| Math |
45 minutes |
28 questions |
| Logic |
60 minutes |
35 questions |
You
can take as long as you like on any one question, but pace
yourself to answer the all the questions in each section in the
allotted time. Since there is a penalty for unanswered questions
you should answer every question, even if you have to guess at
random on the last few in order to finish the section on time.
The
Experimental Section
In addition to these three scored
sections, there may be one "experimental" section that
looks just like one of the scored sections but does not count
toward your score. ETS uses the experimental section to pre-test
the questions that will show up on the scored sections of future
GREs. The main thing for you to know about the experimental
section is that it's unscored.
This
section looks just like one of the scored sections, so it's
important for you to do your best on it too — you won't be
able to tell which section is the experimental one anyway. A lot
of people try hard to figure out which section is experimental.
But all you will know is that if you have two sections of one
measure type (and only one each of the others) then one of these
sections is the experimental one.
Trying
to figure out which section is experimental can actually be
hazardous to your test score. There's a good chance that you'll
guess wrong, and that's not worth the risk. The effort you spend
trying to guess which section is experimental can be a real
distraction too. Finally, it's doubtful that taking a snooze
during a section will help you; it may actually lower your score
if you can't get your brain working again at full steam when the
next section begins.
Sometimes
there's a fifth section called the "Research Section"
which does not count toward your score either. The Research
Section is optional, so there's absolutely no reason for you to
complete it.
More
Information
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