Cracking the GRE, 2010 Edition - Excerpt - The Princeton Review.pdf

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Cracking the
GRE*
2010 Edition
Karen Lurie, Magda Pecsenye, 
and Adam Robinson
PrincetonReview.com
 
 
Random House, Inc.  New York
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by Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in
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ries and 11 Practice Tests for the SAT & PSAT are available
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*GRE is a registered trademark of Educational Testing
Service.
ISBN: 978-0-375-42932-3
ISSN: 1549-9057
Updated By: Andrew Nynka
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Illustrations by: The Production Department
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Acknowledgments
The following people deserve thanks for their help with this book: Matthew McIver, 
Neill Seltzer, Rebecca Lessem, Heather Brady, Emma Parker, Kim Howie and the 
staff and students of The Princeton Review. Thanks also to Andrew Nynka for his 
input on updating this edition of the book.
Special thanks to Adam Robinson, who conceived of and perfected the Joe Bloggs 
approach to standardized tests and many of the other successful techniques used by 
The Princeton Review.
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Contents
So Much More Online .............................................................
viii
Part I: Orientation ......................................................................
1
1
Introduction ..........................................................................
3
2
General Strategy ...................................................................
15
Part II: How to Crack the Verbal Section .....................................
29
3
The Geography of the Verbal Section .........................................
31
4
Analogies .............................................................................
35
5
Sentence Completions ............................................................
53
6
Antonyms ............................................................................
81
7
Reading Comprehension ..........................................................
95
8
Vocabulary for the GRE ...........................................................
97
Part III: How to Crack the Math Section ......................................
161
9
The Geography of the Math Section ..........................................
163
10 Numbers ..............................................................................
171
11 Algebra into Arithmetic ...........................................................
197
12 Math Applications .................................................................
215
13 Geometry ............................................................................. 253
Part IV: How to Crack the Analytical Writing Section ..................
281
14 The Geography of the Analytical Writing Section ......................... 283
15 The Basics of the Issue Topic ................................................... 293
16 Writing the Issue Essay...........................................................
301
17 The Basics of Arguments .........................................................
315
18 Writing the Argument Essay .................................................... 327
19 More Techniques ................................................................... 337
Part V: Practice ......................................................................... 347
20 Ready for Some GRE Aerobics? ................................................. 349
21 Practice Sets ........................................................................ 353
22 Answers and Explanations ...................................................... 377
23 Analytical Writing Practice Sets and Sample Essays ..................... 405
Appendix: Accommodated Testing ............................................
425
Paying for Graduate School 101 ................................................
427
About the Author ................................................................... 435
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…So Much More Online!
More Lessons…
• Step-by-step guide to solving difficult math and verbal problems
• Tutorials that put our strategies into action
• Interactive, click-through learning
• Overview of the question types you will find on the GRE
More Practice…
• Math drills on Ballparking, Geometry, and Plugging In
• Verbal drills on Sentence Completion and Diction
• Full-length practice test
More Scores…
• Automatic scoring for online test
• Optional essay scoring with our LiveGraderSM service
• Performance analysis to tell you which topics you need to review
More Good Stuff…
• Read the vocabulary “Word du Jour” and review its definition with examples
• Plan your review sessions with study plans based on your schedule—
 
4 weeks, 8 weeks, 12 weeks
• Sign up for E-mail tips and tricks
• Chat with other GRE students
…then Grad School! 
• Detailed profiles for hundreds of colleges help you find the school that
is right for you
• Information about financial aid and scholarships
• Dozens of Top 10 ranking lists including Quality of Professors,
Diverse Student Population, and tons more
princetonreview.com/crackingGo Online
Look For These Icons Throughout The Book
More Great Books
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Go to PrincetonReview.com/cracking. You’ll see a Welcome page where you should register your book using 
the serial number. What’s a serial number, you ask? Flip to the back of your book and you’ll see a bunch of let-
ters and numbers printed on the inside back cover. Type this into the window, dashes included. Next you will 
see a Sign In/Sign Up page where you will type in your E-mail address (username) and choose a password. 
Now you’re good to go!
princetonreview.com/crackingPrinceton Review
Getting The Most Out of Your
Materials
Register
1
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Once you are logged in and registered, click 
on “Your Student Tools.” From there, you can 
access practice tests, online course demos, 
class information (for current students), im-
portant dates, and more. Check out the “Ad-
vice Library” and “What’s New” for additional 
information. But first, look under “Your Course 
Tools” and click on the name of your book. Be 
sure to enable pop-ups! The window that will 
pop-up when you click on your book is called 
the dashboard and it will lead you to tons of 
helpful online components.
The dashboard has 5 buttons displayed ver-
tically. Click on each of these buttons to ex-
plore your options. There’s a lot of fantastic 
online content, including drills, problem-solv-
ing strategies worked out in examples, a full 
practice test with automatic grading, a math-
specific section, a verbal-specific section, 
study plans, discussion area, and more. 
Find the grad school that is right for you with 
our ranking lists. See which school has the 
best cafeteria food, the best dorms, the most 
red-tape and lines, the worst library, the best 
parties, and many more categories. Sign up 
for E-mail tips about the GRE and check out 
the vocabulary “Word du Jour” for a new 
word each day. Our website is your resource 
for tons of practice exercises and college in-
formation.
Check Out Your Student Tools
2
Make Use of the Dashboard
3
If you have questions about registering or accessing your Student Tools, contact techsupport@review.com
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Part I
Orientation
1 
Introduction
2 
General Strategy
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Chapter 1
Introduction
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| Cracking the GRE
WHAT IS THE GRE?
The Graduate Record Examination (GRE) is a multiple-choice admissions test in-
tended for applicants to graduate schools. The GRE contains three sections that 
count toward your score.
•
One 75-minute “Analytical Writing” (essay) section that contains two 
essay questions
•
One 30-minute “Verbal Reasoning” (vocabulary and reading) section 
that contains 30 questions
•
One 45-minute “Quantitative Reasoning” (math) section that con-
tains 28 questions
The Analytical Writing section contains two essay questions, one of each of the 
following types:
•
Analyze an issue
•
Analyze an argument
The Verbal section of the GRE contains four types of questions, which pop up in 
no particular order.
•
Antonyms 
•
Sentence completions
•
Analogies  
•
Reading comprehension
The Quantitative, or Math section, contains three types of questions, which ap-
pear in no particular order.
•
Four-choice quantitative comparisons
•
Five-choice problem-solving questions
•
Enter a number problems
Each of these question types will be dealt with in detail later in the book.
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Introduction | 5
WHERE DOES THE GRE COME FROM?
Like most standardized tests in this country, the GRE is administered by 
Educational Testing Service (ETS), a big, tax-exempt private company in New 
Jersey. ETS publishes the GRE under the sponsorship of the Graduate Record 
Examinations Board, which is an organization affiliated with the Association of 
Graduate Schools in the United States.
ETS is the organization that brings you the SAT, the Test of English as a Foreign 
Language (TOEFL), the National Teacher Examination (NTE), and licensing and 
certification exams in dozens of fields, including hair styling, plumbing and golf.
Experimental Section
You will also see a fourth, unidentified, experimental section on the GRE. This 
section will either be Math or Verbal and will look exactly like the real Math or 
Verbal section (the Analytical Writing section is usually not experimental), but it 
won’t count toward your score. ETS uses the experimental section to test GRE 
questions for use on future exams. This means that part of your test fee pays for 
the privilege of serving as a research subject for ETS. Unfortunately, there is noth-
ing you can do about this; you have no way of knowing which section is experi-
mental. So do your best on each of the sections, and don’t waste time worrying 
about which counts and which doesn’t.
Test Structure
The structure of your GRE can vary somewhat, since the Math, Verbal, and ex-
perimental sections can appear in any order after the Analytical Writing section.
Here’s how a typical GRE might look:
Analytical Writing
10-minute break
Verbal
Math
Math
The Analytical Writing section will always be first, and it will always be followed 
by a break. In the above example, the Verbal section was real, and one of the Math 
sections was experimental, though of course we don’t know which one.
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| Cracking the GRE
Obviously on the real GRE you might see two Verbal sections instead of two 
Math sections, and the sections might come in a different order. You might see 
Verbal-Math-Verbal, Math-Math-Verbal, or Math-Verbal-Verbal. During the 10-
minute break after the Analytical Writing section, you should stretch, clear your 
mind, or visit the bathroom—do whatever you’d normally do to relax.
Research Section
The GRE will occasionally include a research section. This section will always be 
the final section of the test, will be optional, and will be clearly identified. ETS 
uses this section to test out new oddball questions. Nothing you do on the re-
search section—including skipping it—will change your score in any way.
How Much Does the GRE Matter?
The simple answer is: It depends. Some programs consider the GRE very impor-
tant, and others view it as more of a formality. Because the GRE is used for such a 
wide range of graduate studies, the relative weight it’s given will vary from field to 
field and from school to school. A Master’s program in English Literature will not 
evaluate the GRE the same way that a Ph.D. program in Physics will, but it’s hard 
to predict what the exact differences will be. A physics department may care more 
about the Math score than the Verbal score, but given that nearly all of its appli-
cants will have high Math scores, a strong Verbal score might make you stand out 
and help you gain admission. 
The best way to answer this question is to contact the programs that you’re think-
ing about applying to and ask them. Speak directly with someone in your prospec-
tive graduate department. Contrary to what many people think, grad schools are 
usually quite willing to tell you how they evaluate the GRE and other aspects of 
your application, and they might just give you an idea of what they’re looking for.
In any case, remember that the GRE is only one part of an application to grad 
school. Many other factors are considered, such as the following:
•
undergraduate transcripts (i.e., your GPA, relevant courses, and the 
quality of the school you attended)
•
work experience
•
any research or work you’ve done in that academic field
•
subject GREs (for certain programs)
•
essays (Personal Statements or other essays)
•
recommendations 
•
interviews
The GRE can be a significant part of your graduate school application (which is 
why you bought this book), but it certainly isn’t the only part.
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Introduction | 7
What Does a GRE Score Look Like?
You will receive separate Verbal and Quantitative scores; these are reported on a 
scale from 200 to 800, and can rise or fall only by multiples of ten. The third digit 
is thus always a zero—you can’t receive a score of 409 or 715 on a section of the 
GRE. Your Analytical Writing section will be listed separately, and is scored on a 
scale of 0 to 6, in half-point increments.
Here’s a look at the percentile rankings of different GRE scores. Percentile rank-
ings tell you what percent of test takers scored beneath a given score. For example, 
a 620 in Verbal corresponds to the 88th percentile; this means that 88 percent of 
test takers scored below 620 on the Verbal section.
Score
Math
Percentile
Verbal
Percentile
Score
Math
Percentile
Verbal
Percentile
800
780
760
740
720
700
680
660
640
620
600
580
560
540
520
94
89
85
80
75
70
66
61
57
52
47
42
38
34
30
99
99
99
99
98
97
95
93
91
88
85
81
76
70
65
500
480
460
440
420
400
380
360
340
320
300
280
260
240
220
26
23
20
17
14
12
10
8
6
5
3
2
2
1
1
60
54
48
43
37
31
25
20
15
10
5
3
1
1
Why is this test on a
200–800 scale? ETS
didn’t want it to look like
the 0–100 scale used in
schools.
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| Cracking the GRE
Score
Analytical Writing Percentile
6
5.5
5
4.5
4
3.5
3
2.5
2
1.5
1
0.5
96
87
71
52
32
17
7
2
1
0
0
0
Here’s a look at the average GRE scores for some general graduate fields.
Intended Graduate Field
Approximate
Number of Test
Takers
Average Math
Score
Average Verbal
Score
Life Sciences
117,577
581
462
Physical Sciences
101,085
697
486
Engineering
56,368
719
468
Social Sciences
55,910
565
487
Humanities and Arts
49,882
566
545
Education
43,844
534
449
Business
8,357
592
442
The Analytical Writing section has only been administered since October 2002, 
and, although some statistics on performances have been published, they may be 
unrepresentative of the real test-taking population. Visit www.gre.org for more 
information on this.
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Introduction | 9
Scheduling a Test
You can schedule a test session for the GRE by calling 800-GRE-CALL or by reg-
istering online at www.gre.org. You can also register through a local testing center 
(the list is available online). After you get the list of local testing centers from ETS, 
you can call the one nearest you and set up an appointment. You can also call ETS 
at 609-771-7670 or send them an e-mail at gre-info@ets.org to ask any general 
questions you have about the GRE. At the time of publication, the test cost $140 
for those who plan to take it in the United States or Puerto Rico, but fees are al-
ways subject to increases. Test fees for those taking the test in other locations and 
any fee changes can be found at www.gre.org.
Stay up to Date
The information in this book was accurate at the time of publication and will be 
updated yearly. However, if the test changes between editions—in other words 
after the current edition is printed—the information in the book might be a little 
behind. You can get the most current information possible on your test by visiting 
GRE’s website at www.gre.org, or checking our website, PrincetonReview.com.
HOW THE VERBAL AND QUANTITATIVE
SECTIONS WORK
The GRE is a computer-adaptive test. Computer-adaptive tests use your perfor-
mance on one question to determine which question you will be asked next. At 
the beginning of the test, ETS assumes that you have the average score in a par-
ticular category—for example, a 480 in Verbal. You’ll be asked a question of dif-
ficulty appropriate to this score level: If you answer correctly, the computer adjusts 
your score to a new level, say 550, and your next question is more difficult. If you 
answer incorrectly, your score will drop and your next question will be less diffi-
cult. In addition to adjusting your score, ETS will adjust the increment by which 
your score is changed with each new correct or incorrect answer as you move 
further into the test, so by the end the computer will have effectively zeroed in on 
your GRE score. That’s the theory, anyway.
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| Cracking the GRE
What Does All This Mean?
It means that the amount of credit you receive for a harder question will depend 
on what you’ve done on the questions before you got to that harder question. If 
you’ve correctly answered all the questions before it, you’re going to get more 
credit for answering a hard question correctly than you would if you had missed a 
bunch of questions before the hard question. In a nutshell, your responses to the 
first questions in a section will have a greater impact on your final score than will 
your responses to questions later in the section, after the computer has already de-
termined your score range. So be EXTRA careful in the beginning of each section. 
Also, you will be penalized for not giving an answer to every question in a section, 
so you must answer every question, whether you do any actual work on it or not 
(more on that in the next chapter).
Never try to figure out how difficult a question is; just concentrate on working 
carefully on each question that you get. You’ll learn a lot more about pacing, as 
well as other general strategy techniques, in the next chapter.  
Computer Testing Facts
•
You can take the GRE almost any day—morning or afternoon, 
weekday or weekend. Appointments are scheduled on a first-come, 
first-served basis.  You may take the test only once per calendar 
month.  
•
There’s no real deadline for registering for the test (technically, you 
can register the day before). But there’s a limited number of seats 
available on any given day and centers do fill up, sometimes weeks 
in advance. It’s a good idea to register in advance, to give yourself at 
least a couple of weeks of lead time. 
•
The GRE is technically simple. Selecting an answer and moving to 
the next question involves three easy steps. All you need to do is 
point the mouse arrow at the answer and click, then click the “Next” 
button, and then click the “Answer Confirm” button to confirm your 
choice.
•
You don’t have a physical test booklet, which makes it impossible to 
write directly on the problems themselves (to underline text, cross out 
answer choices, etc.). Thus, all of your work must be done on scratch 
paper. Although the amount of scratch paper you may use is unlim-
ited, requesting additional paper takes time. You should be efficient 
and organized in how you use it; learning to use your scratch paper 
effectively is one of the keys to scoring well on the GRE.
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Introduction | 11
•
When you’ve finished taking the test, you will be given the option to 
accept or cancel your scores. Of course, you have to make this deci-
sion before you learn what the scores are. If you choose to cancel your 
scores they cannot be reinstated, and you will never learn what they 
were. No refunds are given for canceled scores, and your GRE report 
will reflect that you took the test on that day and canceled (though 
this shouldn’t be held against you). If you choose to accept your 
scores, they cannot be canceled afterward. We suggest that, unless 
you are absolutely certain you did poorly, you accept your score. 
•
You will receive your Verbal and Math scores the instant you finish 
the exam (provided that you choose not to cancel your score), but 
your Analytical Writing scores and “official” percentile scores for all 
three sections won’t get to you until a few weeks later, in the mail. 
You will not see your actual test ever again unless you make a special 
effort. ETS offers the GRE Diagnostic Service (grediagnostic.ets.org)
as a free option for test takers to have a limited review of their tests. 
This service allows you to see how many questions you missed and 
where they fell on the test, but you cannot review the actual ques-
tions. The diagnostic service also claims to let you know the difficulty 
of the questions you missed, but the scale used—a simple scale of 1 to 
5—is not particularly useful.
ACCOMMODATED TESTING
If you require accommodated testing, please see the Appendix at the end of this 
book. It contains information on the forms you’ll need to fill out and procedures 
you’ll need to follow to apply for accommodated testing.  Be sure to start that ap-
plication process well in advance of when you want to take your test, as it can take 
many weeks to complete. 
How to Use This Book
This book is full of our tried-and-true GRE test-taking techniques, some of which, 
at first, might seem to violate your gut instincts. In order to take full advantage of 
our methods, however, you’ll have to trust them and use them exclusively. In or-
der to give you as much practice as possible, we’ve provided many sets of practice 
problems at the end of this book. We’ve grouped these math and verbal questions 
according to their difficulty: They’re labeled as being easy, medium, or difficult. 
(The analytical writing questions have not been assigned difficulty levels.) In ad-
dition, we’ve included an extensive vocabulary section that contains drills, quizzes, 
word lists, and advice for expanding your vocabulary.
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| Cracking the GRE
Real GREs
The practice problems in this book are designed to simulate the questions that 
appear on the real GRE. Part of your preparation, however, should involve work-
ing with real GRE problems. Working with real questions from past GRE exams 
is the best way to practice our techniques and prepare for the test. However, the 
only source of real GREs is the publisher of the test, ETS, which so far has refused 
to let anyone (including us) license actual questions from old tests. Therefore we 
strongly recommend that you obtain GRE POWERPREP® Software—Test Prepara-
tion for the GRE General Test, which includes a retired question pool presented in 
two computer-adaptive tests. A CD-ROM version of this software is sent to all test 
takers when they register for the test and you can also download POWERPREP
for free at www.gre.org. In addition, you should purchase the book Practicing to 
Take the GRE General Test, 10th Edition, which contains retired math and verbal 
questions from seven paper-and-pencil GREs. You can buy this book from any 
large bookstore or order it online at www.gre.org.
Of course, the GREs in the book are paper-and-pencil tests, so use them to prac-
tice content. POWERPREP will allow you to practice on a computer in the com-
puter-adaptive test style. Whatever you’re using, always practice with scratch paper 
and not by writing in the book. As you prepare for the GRE, work through every 
question you do as if the question is being presented on a computer screen. This 
means not writing anything on the problems themselves. No crossing off answers, 
no circling, no underlining. Copy everything to scratch paper and do your work 
there. You can’t give yourself a crutch in your preparation that you won’t have on 
the actual test.
Our Exclusive Tools
POWERPREP isn’t the only way for you to practice taking the GRE on a computer. 
If you go to the beginning of this book, you can find instructions to register—free 
of charge—for The Princeton Review’s interactive online test-preparation course. 
In this course, you’ll get access not only to online review modules designed to re-
inforce the lessons in this book, but also to computer-adaptive practice GREs. 
These tests look and act like the real computer-adaptive GRE, from the layout of 
the screen, to the content of the questions, to its adaptive nature. There’s even a 
time-clock clicking ominously away on the screen, just as there is on the real GRE. 
At the end, you’ll receive a Math score and a Verbal score like on the real test. (The 
computer can’t read your essay, so you won’t get a score for the Analytical Writing 
section.) Make sure to take both online tests—since the real test is computerized, 
there’s no substitute for practice on a computer.
Go online for CAT GREs
Go to PrincetonReview.
com/cracking to take
realistic exams.
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Introduction | 13
Making a Schedule
The GRE, like other standardized tests, is not a test for which you can cram. While 
you may have fond memories from your college days of spending the night before 
the midterm with a pot of coffee and a 500-page economics textbook, that strate-
gy won’t be as effective on the GRE. Why? Because by and large the GRE is a test 
of patterns, not of facts. This book does its best to reveal those patterns to you, but 
without sufficient time to practice and absorb the information in this book, your 
GRE score is not likely to improve. Thus, you should allow an adequate amount 
of time to fully prepare for the GRE. If you are planning to take your test next 
week, consider picking up our book Crash Course for the GRE instead; it’s tailored 
especially for test takers who are on a tight schedule.
Otherwise, you should allow yourself somewhere between 4 and 12 weeks to pre-
pare for the GRE. Obviously we can’t know exactly where you are at in terms of 
your starting score, your target score, and the amount of time you can devote to 
studying, but in our experience, 4 weeks is about the minimum amount of time 
you’d want to spend, while 12 weeks is about the maximum. There are a number 
of reasons for these suggested preparation times. Attempting to prepare in fewer 
than 4 weeks typically does not allow sufficient time to master the techniques pre-
sented in this book. As you’ll see, some of our approaches are counterintuitive and 
take some getting used to. Without adequate practice time, you may not have full 
confidence in the techniques. Additionally, vocabulary is a large part of the Verbal 
section of the GRE and it’s difficult to substantially increase your vocabulary in a 
short period of time. Finally, as mentioned before, the GRE contains a number of 
patterns, and the more time you spend studying the test, the better you will be at 
recognizing these patterns.
On the other hand, spending an inordinate amount of time preparing for the 
GRE can have its downside as well. The first concern is a purely practical one: 
There is a finite amount of GRE practice material available. Budgeting six months 
of preparation time is unproductive because you’ll run out of materials in less than 
half that time. And if you try to stretch the material to fit a longer time frame, 
you’ll probably end having days and maybe weeks in which you do no preparation 
at all.
Finally, spreading the material out over a long period of time may result in your 
forgetting some of the lessons from the beginning of your studies. It’s better to 
work assiduously and consistently over a shorter time period than to dilute your 
efforts over a long time frame.
Check out study plans
online
Go to PrincetonReview.
com/cracking to see
detailed 4, 8, and 12 week
study plans.
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Chapter 2
General Strategy
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| Cracking the GRE
CRACKING THE SYSTEM
Lesson One: The GRE definitely does NOT measure your intelligence, nor does it 
measure how well you will do in graduate school. The sooner you accept this, the 
better off you’ll be. Despite what ETS says or admissions officers think, the GRE 
is less a measure of your intelligence than it is a measure of your ability to take the 
GRE.
I Thought the GRE Was Coach-Proof
ETS has long claimed that one cannot be coached to do better on its tests. If the 
GRE were indeed a test of intelligence, then that would be true. But the GRE is 
NOT a measure of intelligence; it’s a test of how well you handle standardized 
tests, and that’s something that everyone can be taught. The first step in doing 
better on the GRE is realizing that. This is good news for you; it means that your 
ability to take ETS tests can be improved. With proper instruction and sufficient 
practice, virtually all test takers can raise their scores, often substantially. You 
don’t need to become smarter in order to do this; you just need to become better 
at taking ETS tests. That’s why you bought this book.
Why Should I Listen to The Princeton Review?
Quite simply, we monitor the GRE. Our teaching methods were developed 
through exhaustive analysis of all available GREs and careful research into the 
methods by which standardized tests are constructed. Our focus is on the basic 
concepts that will enable you to attack any problem, strip it down to its essential 
components, and solve it in as little time as possible.
Your Own Personal GRE
The GRE is an adaptive test. What exactly does that mean? We’ll give you a de-
tailed explanation in the General Strategy section of this book, but the short of it 
is that your response to each question will determine how difficult your next ques-
tion will be. If you miss a question, the next question will be easier. Sounds great, 
right? Well, the downside is that your score will also drop. If you get a question 
right, your next question will be harder. Fortunately, your score will go up, too. 
So everyone will see different questions depending on their performance on the 
test. Yup, you and your best friend could take the GRE at the same time, and see 
completely different tests.
Because the computer “decides” what to do next, based on how you answer the 
question on the screen, you MUST answer that questions in order to get the next 
one. Without your response, the computer won’t know what to give you next. This 
is why you can’t skip a question and come back to it later. One important con-
sequence of not being able to skip any questions is that on some of them you 
will probably have to eliminate as many answer choices as you can and make an 
You CAN improve
your scores!
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General Strategy | 17
intelligent guess. Given that the GRE is adaptive, you will find that some of the 
questions are extremely difficult even if you’re doing well. Be prepared for this. 
Not only can’t you skip any questions, but you also can’t go back and change the 
answers to any questions once you’ve answered them. Therefore, work carefully 
and always double-check your answer before you move on to the next question.
Think Like the Test Writers
You might be surprised to learn that the GRE isn’t written by distinguished pro-
fessors, renowned scholars, or graduate school admissions officers. For the most 
part, it’s written by ordinary ETS employees, sometimes with freelance help from 
local graduate students. You have no reason to be intimidated by these people. 
As you become more familiar with the test, you will also develop a sense of “the 
ETS mentality.” This is a predictable kind of thinking that influences nearly every 
part of nearly every ETS exam. By learning to recognize the ETS mentality, you’ll 
earn points even when you aren’t sure why an answer is correct. You’ll inevitably 
do better on the test by learning to think like the people who wrote it.
The Only “Correct” Answer Is the One That Earns You
Points
The instructions on the GRE tell you to select the “best” answer to each ques-
tion. ETS calls them “best” answers, or “credited” responses, instead of “correct” 
answers to protect itself from the complaints of test takers who might be tempted 
to quarrel with ETS’s judgment. Remember, you have to choose from the choices 
ETS gives you, and sometimes, especially on the Verbal section, you might not 
love any of them. Your job is to find the one answer for which ETS gives credit.
Cracking the System
“Cracking the system” is our phrase for getting inside the minds of the people who 
write these tests. This emphasis on earning points rather than finding the “correct” 
answer may strike you as somewhat cynical, but it is crucial to doing well on the 
GRE. After all, the GRE leaves you no room to make explanations or justifica-
tions for your responses. 
You’ll do better on the GRE by putting aside your feelings about real education 
and surrendering yourself to the strange logic of the standardized test. 
This is NOT a test of 
intelligence!
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| Cracking the GRE
COMPUTER-ADAPTIVE TESTING
Okay, let’s start talking strategy for the Verbal and Quantitative sections (the An-
alytical Writing section is a completely different animal, which we’ll deal with 
later). Come back to this chapter a few days before test day to review these general 
techniques.
What the Verbal and Quantitative Questions Look Like
When there’s a question on the screen, it will look like this:
Test
Quit
Section
Exit
Answer
Confirm
Help
?
Next
00:44
  GRE - Section 3
8 of 28
If
=
, then x =
4
9
x
3
9
4
4
3
4
27
3
4
1
Time
The problem you’re working on will be in the middle of the screen. The answer 
choices will have little bubbles next to them. To choose an answer, you click on 
the bubble that corresponds to the choice you have selected. 
A readout of the time remaining in the section will be displayed in the upper left 
corner (if you choose to have it displayed); the number of questions you’ve an-
swered and the total number of questions in the section will be displayed in the 
upper right corner. The bottom of the screen will contain the following buttons, 
from left to right:
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General Strategy | 19
Test Quit: You can end the test at any moment by clicking on 
this button. However, unless you become violently ill, we do not 
recommend that you do this. Even if you decide not to have this 
test scored (an option that you are given when you’re done with 
the exam), you should finish the test. After all, it’s great practice 
for when you finally want the test to count. Besides, you can’t 
get a refund from ETS.
Section Exit: You’ll be taken out of the section you’re working 
on by clicking on this button. You should only click on this but-
ton when you’re sure that you’re done with a section. Once you 
exit, there’s no going back.
Time: You can make visible or hide the digital countdown 
by clicking on this button. Some people like to have it on the 
screen; others like to look at their watches instead. Whatever 
you decide, when time is almost up, the display will appear or 
reappear on the screen even if you’ve told it to go away earlier. 
During the last five minutes of the section, the display will start 
flashing, and will show you the remaining time in both minutes 
AND seconds. This is a good time to guess your favorite letter  
for whatever questions you have left in the section, since you 
don’t want to leave any questions unanswered (more on that 
coming up).
Help: If you click on this button, you’ll get a little tutorial ex-
plaining what the different buttons mean and how to use them. 
Unfortunately, you won’t get any help with the actual material 
on the screen!
Answer Confirm: ETS makes you confirm your choice, to make 
sure you don’t accidentally pick an answer you didn’t intend to. 
When you click on “Next” (see below) the “Answer Confirm” 
icon lights up. Click on this to finalize your answer and move to 
the next question.
Next: After you’ve answered the question you’re working on by 
clicking the bubble next to the best answer choice, click on this 
button. (And then you need to confirm that answer. See above.)
The ETS Elf
Remember when you were a kid and you thought that the people on TV were 
actually inside the television? Well, that’s sort of like what’s happening with the 
GRE. It’s as if a diabolical little ETS Elf is hanging out inside the computer, craft-
ing your test as you go along. 
As you’re doing the first math question in the Math section, the ETS Elf is in the 
computer, waiting to see how you respond. He starts you off with about a 500 as 
a score. (In reality, ETS uses a narrower raw scoring system that goes from 3
to 3 and then converts it to a GRE score between 200 and 800 at the end of the 
test, but the idea is the same.) You tackle the first question and pick your answer; 
you got it right! The ETS Elf moves your score up to, say, 580, laughs maniacally, 
Test
Quit
Section
Exit
Time
Help
?
Answer
Confirm
Next
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| Cracking the GRE
and serves up your next question—a harder math question. Then he sits back and 
waits to see what you pick...oops! You got it wrong. The ETS Elf knocks your score 
down to, say, a 520, and then gives you an easier question. Now suppose you’re not 
sure what the answer to this one is, but you make an educated guess (we’ll teach 
you how to do this) and get it right. The ETS Elf raises your score to a 560, and 
gives you a slightly harder problem…and so on, and so forth.
So, when you get a correct answer, the ETS Elf gives you a harder question and 
raises your score. When you get an incorrect answer, the ETS Elf gives you an 
easier question and lowers your score. Potentially, every test taker can have a dif-
ferent test in terms of the questions that he or she sees, since every GRE is tailored 
to the specific responses of the test taker.
Don’t Psychoanalyze the Elf
When taking computer-based GREs, you may be tempted to think about whether 
the question you’re working on is easier or harder than the previous question, in 
order to figure out whether you got the previous question right. For many reasons, 
you want to sedulously avoid that temptation. (If you don’t know the word sedu-
lous, look it up in the Hit Parade in Chapter 8.) Do not attempt to analyze the 
Elf ’s choices or get inside his head. Why?
•
Question difficulty is not an exact science. No one can say that one 
question is exactly 10 percent harder than another.
•
You are a distinct individual. The difficulty that the ETS Elf assigns 
to questions is based on how the mass of GRE test takers respond to 
them. No doubt you have much in common with the mass of GRE 
test takers (we all do), but you also have idiosyncrasies that make you 
different. That you find a question easy does not, in itself, mean that 
the question is an “easy” question, and that you must therefore have 
missed the previous question. You will always be better at some types 
of questions than others, and this will affect how you perceive the 
difficulty of questions.
•
There are other requirements of the test design. While fundamen-
tally the test operates by presenting you with more difficult or easier 
questions based on your responses, there are other requirements that 
the computer must fulfill. For example, the GRE must have the right 
balance of antonyms, analogies, sentence completions, and reading 
comprehension questions. It must also test you on a wide range of 
math topics: arithmetic, algebra, geometry, statistics, etc. In addi-
tion to these content-based requirements, there are other statistical 
requirements that can affect the questions you see. 
•
There’s nothing you can do about it anyway. In the end, this is the 
best reason to avoid analyzing the difficulty of GRE questions. Even 
if you were able to determine whether you got the previous ques-
tion right or wrong, you can’t change it, and it should not affect how 
you’ll approach the question in front of you. The best you can do at 
any given time is to focus only on the problem you’re currently facing. 
That’s how you’ll succeed.
th
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General Strategy | 21
Some Questions Are More Equal than Others
As we mentioned previously, at the beginning of the test, your score will move 
up and down in larger increments than it will at the end, when the ETS Elf has 
largely zeroed in on your score and is now merely refining it—trying to decide 
whether you deserve, say, a 630 or 640.
This means that the ETS Elf gives varying weights to the questions. If you divide the 
sections roughly into thirds, then the first third of the questions in a section will be 
weighted the most. The second third will count less, and the final third will count 
relatively little. Thus, the early questions determine the bulk of your score, so make sure 
to work as accurately as you can on the first third to first half of each section.
Do note, however, that at any point in the test, a string of wrong answers will 
seriously damage your score. So while those final questions are significantly less 
important than the earlier questions, if you miss three in a row or four out of five, 
the ETS Elf will decide to drop your score by a substantial number.
How Does Adaptive Testing Really Work?
At this point, we’ve given you the basic idea of how a CAT works. But those of 
you who are curious about some of the nuts and bolts of computer adaptive testing 
should read this section. 
In order to understand adaptive testing, you first have to understand some of the 
assumptions that underlie it. Most important is the assumption that each person 
has an innate GRE ability, kind of like a number stamped on the inside of his 
brain, and that the goal of the CAT is to discern this number. Of course the 
whole system rests on another shaky assumption: that your GRE “ability”—what-
ever that is—also indicates your capacity for graduate-level study.
On the GRE, questions are evaluated by three criteria. First, the difficulty level, 
second, the likelihood of your guessing the right answer (which is usually about 
20 percent, or 1 in 5). Third, how well the question discriminates between test 
takers of different abilities.  
To understand this third point, let’s imagine that magical questions exist, which 
can perfectly discriminate between test takers with different GRE numbers 
stamped on their brains. Say that the first magical question on the GRE is of 
medium difficulty, about 500-level. A perfectly discriminating question would 
mean that everyone who got it right had a GRE ability between 500 and 800, and 
everyone who got it wrong had a GRE ability between 200 and 500. At the begin-
ning of the test, the range of possible scores is 600 points (from 200 to 800). After 
our magical question, we’ve cut the range of scores in half, to 300. With further 
magical questions cutting the range in half each time, we could arrive at a final 
GRE score in only six questions.
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| Cracking the GRE
Of course, there are no magical questions; sometimes a lower-scoring student gets 
a hard question right, or a high-scoring student makes a careless error on an easy 
question. ETS feels, however, that 30 verbal questions and 28 math questions are 
enough for the computer to zero in on your GRE ability with an acceptable error 
of measurement. 
In the end, don’t worry about the mathematical details of a CAT. As is true in 
many other situations, the important thing isn’t knowing why something happens, 
but what to do about it. You don’t need to know why the tide comes in in order 
to know that you should move your towel farther up on the beach when it does. 
Likewise, as long as you have a good strategy for tackling the GRE (which we’ll 
teach you in this book) you don’t need to concern yourself with the inner work-
ings of the computer algorithm.
Answer Every Question
Again, be as accurate as possible on early questions. The ETS Elf doesn’t let you 
go backward, so do not move on to the next question until you are sure about 
your answer (or about your guess). You’ll be penalized for incorrect answers, but 
remember that the penalty becomes less strict as you get deeper into each section. 
But get this: You will also be penalized for not giving an answer to every question in 
a section.
Basically, the ETS Elf will reduce your raw score by the percentage of unanswered 
questions in a section (e.g., a 30-question section with 6 questions left blank will 
mean a 20 percent reduction of your raw score). So, do not leave any question 
unanswered.
How to Handle a CAT
Here are some important general strategies to help you maximize your score on a 
Computer Adaptive Test.
1. Let the Computer Help You
During the last five minutes of a section, the time display on the computer screen 
will start flashing, showing you the remaining time in both minutes and seconds. 
Let this be your signal to start wrapping things up. Keep an eye on the time so 
you don’t leave any questions unanswered.
2. Don’t Rush
Instinct might suggest that if there’s a penalty for blanks and a possibility for lost 
points due to incorrect answers, then you should work as quickly as possible in 
order to leave enough time to work the final few questions. But the impulse to 
rush through the early questions is dangerous, as these questions are worth con-
siderably more points than the later ones. To maximize your score, work slowly 
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General Strategy | 23
and carefully at the beginning of the section. A high degree of accuracy in the 
first third to half of each section is the single most important factor in earning the 
highest possible scores on the GRE. 
3. Guess Aggressively
Once you’ve worked carefully through the first third to half of the section, for 
the remainder of the test it is important to avoid getting bogged down in time-
consuming questions. If you encounter a question that seems extremely difficult 
or time-consuming, eliminate the answers that you know are wrong, and make an 
educated guess (you’re about to learn more about this). This will provide you with 
more time to work on subsequent questions, which may be easier for you.
4. Respond to Every Question
When time is running out, you must still make sure to select an answer for every 
question. If you aren’t going to have time to work the last few questions, then al-
low yourself enough time to guess. At a certain point you should simply pick your 
favorite letter and guess that letter on any remaining questions, to make sure you 
complete the test. Practicing on the computer will allow you to determine how 
much time you need to leave for yourself in order to finish.
Developing a Pacing Plan
Now that you know that you need to work more carefully on the early questions, 
since that’s what counts most toward your score, how should you apportion your 
time in order to accomplish that? It’s all fine to say that you should spend more 
time at the beginning than at the end, but how much more time? These are the 
questions that are addressed by a pacing plan. One of the most important things 
you can bring to the GRE is a concrete plan for how to pace yourself in the Math 
and Verbal sections. 
A pacing plan has to start with a goal. What is your target score? You’ll pace your-
self differently if you’re aiming for a 500 than you will if you’re aiming for a 700. 
Your goal needs to be based on a realistic assessment of where you are now and 
how much time you have, which is why it’s important for you to take a practice 
computer GRE on PrincetonReview.com before you begin working in earnest. 
As you learn more and become better at the GRE, your pacing plan will probably 
change. 
Start by using the following charts as guidelines. You have 45 minutes to com-
plete the Math section and 30 minutes to complete the Verbal section. In each of 
the charts below, the sections have been split into three equal time segments: 15 
minutes each for Math and 10 minutes each for Verbal. The chart supplies a rec-
ommendation for the number of questions that you should work on in each 10- or 
15-minute segment. These recommendations are given for five different scoring 
goals. If you’re aiming for a score between two of these numbers, simply adjust the 
pacing recommendation accordingly.
Remember: All the 
answers you need are on 
your screen.
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| Cracking the GRE
Math
Target Score
Number of Questions to Attempt
1st 15 minutes
2nd 15 minutes
3rd 15 minutes
500 or less
7
8
13
600
7
9
12
700
8
9
11
800
9
9
10
Verbal
Target Score
Number of Questions to Attempt
1st 10 minutes
2nd 10 minutes
3rd 10 minutes
500 or less
8
9
13
600
8
10
12
700
9
10
11
800
10
10
10
Let’s examine a few things about the pacing charts. Because of the greater impor-
tance of the early questions, the number of questions you should attempt in the 
first third of the section is lower than the number in later thirds. However, you 
can see that the higher your target score, the more evenly distributed your work 
becomes. The reason is that as you try to push your score higher, eventually you 
will need to achieve high accuracy on the middle and later questions to continue 
improving. Thus, at very high scoring targets (700+) you’ll be spending your time 
almost evenly across the test.
Another thing that we need to emphasize is that following the pacing chart will not 
automatically lead to the target score you’re aiming for. Obviously, your accuracy 
on the questions is going to determine your score. The pacing chart is designed to 
help you achieve the highest accuracy on the questions that matter most, but only 
hard work and practice will enable you to become better at solving GRE problems.
The pacing charts are general guidelines, so other factors need to be taken into ac-
count. One is that some questions simply take longer than others. This is most ob-
vious in the case of reading comprehension questions in the Verbal section. Read-
ing comprehension questions take longer than any other type of verbal question 
because of the length of the passages. So, any portion of the Verbal section that 
contains lots of reading comprehension questions will require more time than you 
otherwise might have anticipated. Be flexible.
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General Strategy | 25
For some of the lower target scores, you may feel that the number of questions 
that you need to complete in the last 10 or 15 minutes seems overwhelming. For 
example, the Verbal chart suggests leaving 15 questions for your final 10 minutes 
when you’re aiming for a 500. Are you supposed to work those final 15 questions 
at a rate of 40 seconds per question and maintain a high level of accuracy? No. 
You’ll have to make educated guesses on many of those questions and probably 
take some blind guesses at the end, but apportioning your time that way will al-
low you to spend more time on the early, important questions where your score is 
affected more.
Don’t forget to return to the pacing charts during the weeks ahead to make sure 
you’re following the best strategy. You may have to revise your plan as your studies 
progress.
THE AMAZING POWER OF POE—
PROCESS OF ELIMINATION
One fabulous thing about the GRE is that the “best” answer is always on the 
screen; you don’t have to come up with it out of thin air. However, because there 
are roughly four times as many wrong answers as there are right answers, it’s often 
easier to identify wrong answers than to identify the right one.
Can I Have Partial Credit?
Remember when you were in high school, and even if you got a question wrong 
on a test, your teacher gave you partial credit? For example, you used the right 
formula on a math question, miscalculated, and got the wrong result, but your 
teacher gave you some credit because you understood the concept?
Well, those days are over. ETS doesn’t care how you got your answer; it only cares 
about whether or not you have clicked on the right answer choice. You might as 
well benefit from this by getting questions right without really knowing how to do 
them. And you do that with the Process of Elimination, or POE. POE is the way 
to go. Learn it, live it, love it. 
The Importance of Wrong Answers
By using POE, you will be able to improve your score on the GRE by looking for
wrong answers instead of right ones on questions you find difficult. Why? Because, 
once you’ve found the wrong ones, picking the right one can be a piece of cake.
Wrong answers on standardized multiple-choice tests are known in the testing 
industry as “distractors.” They are called distractors because their purpose is to 
distract testers away from correct choices on questions they don’t understand. This 
keeps them from earning points accidentally, by picking the right answer for the 
wrong reasons.
POE is your new way of life.
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| Cracking the GRE
This simple fact will be an enormous help to you. By learning to recognize these 
distractors, you will greatly improve your score.
Improve Your Odds Indirectly
Every time you are able to eliminate an incorrect choice on a GRE question, you 
improve your odds of finding the best answer. The more incorrect choices you 
eliminate, the better your odds. 
For this reason, some of our test-taking strategies are aimed at helping you arrive at 
ETS’s answer indirectly. Doing this will make you much more successful at avoid-
ing the traps laid in your path by the test writers. This is because most of the traps 
are designed to catch unwary test takers who try to approach the problems directly.
POE and Guessing
If you guessed blindly on a five-choice GRE problem, you would have a 1-in-5 
chance of picking ETS’s answer. Eliminate one incorrect choice, and your chances 
improve to one in four. Eliminate three, and you have a fifty-fifty chance of earn-
ing points by guessing. Get the picture? You must answer each question to get to 
the next one, so you’ll have to guess sometimes. Why not improve your odds?
Use That Paper!
For POE to work, it’s crucial that you keep track of what choices you’re eliminat-
ing. By crossing out a clearly incorrect choice, you permanently eliminate it from 
consideration. If you don’t cross it out, you’ll keep considering it. Crossing out in-
correct choices can make it much easier to find the “credited response,” because 
there will be fewer places where it can hide. But how can you cross anything out 
on a computer screen?
By using your scratch paper! Even though on the GRE, the answer choices have 
empty bubbles next to them, you’re going to pretend that they are labeled A, B, C, 
D, and E (and so are we, throughout this book). 
A
A
B
B
C
C
D
D
E
A
B
C
D
E
A
B
C
D
E
E
A
A
B
B
C
C
D
D
E
A
B
C
D
E
A
B
C
D
E
E
Guess, but guess
intelligently.
Always cross off wrong 
answer choices on your 
scratch paper.
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General Strategy | 27
Carve up at least a couple of pages (front and back) like this. This will give you a 
bunch of distinct work areas per page, and is especially helpful for the Math sec-
tion; you don’t want to get confused when your work from one question runs into 
your work from a previous question.
By doing this, you can physically cross off choices that you’re eliminating. Do it 
every time you do a GRE question, in this book or anywhere else. Get used to not 
writing near the question, since you won’t be able to on test day.
More About Scratch Paper
You’ll get six sheets of scratch paper at the beginning of the test. If you run out, 
you can request more, but be aware that the proctor will take away your old 
scratch paper as he or she gives you the new paper. Also, if you’re in the middle of 
a section, you’ll have to put your hand in the air and wait for a proctor to notice 
it, collect the new paper, enter the testing room, and give it to you. In short, don’t 
be profligate with your scratch paper. Use it wisely and try to refresh your supply 
during the break. (If you’re not sure what profligate means, you can look it up in 
Chapter 8.)
Double Check
Get into the habit of double-checking all of your answers before you choose them. 
Remember, it’s not possible to skip a question and come back to it later. Once you 
confirm your answer, that question is out of your life forever. So you can’t afford 
to make careless errors. Telling yourself to “be careful” isn’t particularly helpful—
we’re all trying. The only way to reliably avoid careless errors is to adopt habits that 
make them less likely to occur. Always check to see that you’ve transcribed infor-
mation correctly to your scratch paper. Always read the problem at least twice and 
note any important parts that you might forget later. Always check your calcula-
tions. And always read the question one last time before selecting your answer. By 
training yourself to avoid careless errors, you will raise your score.
AT THE TESTING CENTER
Don’t be surprised if you’re the only one taking the GRE, or indeed, any test, at 
your testing center. You’ll be asked for photo identification, and then an employee 
will take a digital photograph of you (even worse than your driver’s license pic-
ture!) before taking you to the computer station where you will take the test. You 
will be given a desk, a computer, a keyboard, a mouse, a few pieces of scratch pa-
per, and a few pencils. Some test centers will even offer you earplugs. Before the 
test begins, make sure your desk is sturdy and you have enough light, and don’t be 
afraid to speak up if you want to move.
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| Cracking the GRE
If there are other people in the room, they might not be taking the GRE. They 
could be taking a nursing test, or a licensing exam for architects. They may not 
even be starting their exams at the same time. Therefore, you should pay no at-
tention to when other people finish sections or take breaks—it has no relation to 
what you’re doing. 
The testing center employee will set you up at your computer, but from then on, 
the computer itself will act as your proctor. It will tell you how much time you 
have left in a section, when time is up, and when to move on to the next section. 
During the exam, the test center employees will be monitoring the testing room 
for security purposes with closed-circuit television. 
But don’t worry, you won’t even notice. 
Let It Go
When you begin a new section, focus on that sec-
tion and put the last section you completed behind 
you. Don’t think about that pesky antonym from 
an earlier section while a geometry question is on 
your screen now. You can’t go back, and besides, 
your impression of how you did on a section is 
probably much worse than reality.
This Is the End
As we said earlier, when you’re done with the test, 
the computer will ask you (twice) if you want this 
test to count. If you say “no,” the computer will 
not record your score, no schools will ever see it, 
and neither will you. You can’t look at your score 
and THEN decide whether you want to keep it or 
not, and you can’t change your mind later. If you 
say you want the test to count, the computer will 
give you your score right there on the screen. A few 
weeks later, you’ll receive your verified score in the 
mail, along with your Analytical Writing section 
score, and you can’t change your mind and cancel 
them.
The Week Before the Test
A week before the test is not the time for any major life changes. This is NOT the 
week to quit smoking, start smoking, quit drinking coffee, start drinking coffee, 
start a relationship, end a relationship, or quit a job. Business as usual, okay?
Test Day Tips
•
Dress in layers, so that you’ll be 
comfortable regardless of whether the 
room is cool or warm.
•
Don’t bother to bring a calculator; 
you’re not allowed to use one.
•
Be sure to have breakfast, or lunch, 
depending on the time for which your 
test is scheduled (but don’t eat any-
thing, you know, “weird”). And take it 
easy on the liquids and the caffeine.
•
Do a few GRE practice problems 
beforehand to warm up your brain. 
Don’t try to tackle difficult new ques-
tions, but go through a few questions 
that you’ve done before to help you 
review the problem-solving strategies 
for each section of the GRE. This will 
also help you put your “game face” on 
and get you into test mode. 
•
Make sure to bring photo identifica-
tion to the test center. Acceptable 
forms of identification include your 
driver’s license, photo-bearing em-
ployee ID cards, and valid passports.
•
If you registered by mail, you must 
also bring the authorization voucher 
sent to you by ETS. 
What to Bring to
the Test Center:
1. Your registration 
ticket
2. A photo ID and one 
other form of ID
3. A reliable watch
4. Several pencils
5. A snack
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Part II
How to Crack the 
Verbal Section
3 
The Geography of the Verbal Section
4 
Analogies
5 
Sentence Completions
6 
Antonyms
7 
Reading Comprehension
8 
Vocabulary for the GRE
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Chapter 3
The Geography of 
the Verbal Section
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| Cracking the GRE
WHAT’S IN THE VERBAL SECTION
Every GRE contains a scored Verbal section, which lasts 30 minutes and contains 
30 questions, in no particular order, broken down as follows:
•
six to eight analogy questions
•
five to seven sentence completion or text completion questions
•
eight to ten antonym questions
•
two to four reading comprehension passages, with a total of six to ten 
questions
Most of the time, the Verbal section will start with a few antonym and analogy 
questions. These are classified by ETS as “vocabulary” problems, while sentence 
completion and reading comprehension questions are classified as “reading” prob-
lems. You might not see reading comp questions until question seven or eight. 
Generally, the higher you’re scoring, the more “vocabulary” questions you’ll see; 
this serves to emphasize the tremendous importance of a good vocabulary to scor-
ing well on the GRE Verbal section.
On the Screen
All of the verbal questions are multiple-choice questions with five answer choices. 
The reading comprehension passages will appear on split screens, usually with a 
scroll bar. Make sure you scroll down as far as you can, to guarantee that you are 
seeing the entire passage.
POE
Remember that there is never a “right” answer to a verbal question, only what ETS 
calls the “credited response,” or “best” answer. Think of the best answer as the one 
that is the least bad. So, if you can recognize the bad answers and eliminate them, 
you can zero in on the best answer. That’s how Process of Elimination (POE) works. 
However, if you’re not sure what a word in an answer choice means, don’t eliminate it,
because it might be the best answer. Only eliminate answers you know are wrong.
SCRATCH PAPER
You may want to write down some of the verbal strategies on your scratch paper to 
remind yourself what to do during the actual test—although they should really be 
second-nature to you by then.
You may be tempted to do the verbal questions in your head. Don’t. Use your 
scratch paper, not only for jotting down strategy, but also for POE. Always write 
down A, B, C, D, E on your scratch paper so you can physically cross out choices 
you’re eliminating.
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The Geography of the Verbal Section | 33
THE IMPORTANCE OF VOCABULARY
Because vocabulary is so heavily emphasized on the GRE, you’ll need to start 
working on expanding your vocabulary right away. If you are like most people, 
you may find that increasing your Verbal score is more difficult than increasing 
your Math score. This is because your vocabulary places something of a ceiling on 
your score. The better your vocabulary, the higher that ceiling and the higher your 
score.
The verbal techniques we’ll be teaching you will enable you to make the most of 
the vocabulary you do possess, whatever its limits. However, the more words you 
know, the better the techniques work. It’s kind of like the relationship between 
diet and exercise. Either one will help you lose weight, but if you really want to 
lose as much weight as possible, you have to do both.
The bottom line is simply this:
•
It is difficult to make a substantial improvement on the Verbal section 
of the GRE without improving your vocabulary.
•
It is nearly impossible to achieve a score in the 650+ range without a 
strong vocabulary.
The extent to which you’re truly serious about raising your Verbal score will be the 
extent to which you focus on learning more words, and every new word you learn 
makes it more likely that you will score well on the GRE Verbal section.
The best way to build a good vocabulary is to read a variety of good books over the 
course of a lifetime. Since you don’t have a lifetime to prepare for the GRE, you 
should turn ahead to Chapter 8, “Vocabulary for the GRE,” and start working 
through the lessons there. Chapter 8 contains “The GRE Hit Parade” and “Be-
yond the Hit Parade” (which contain words that appear frequently on the GRE), 
as well as exercises, quizzes, and general advice on building a better vocabulary. 
With an improved vocabulary, you’ll be in an even stronger position to take ad-
vantage of the problem-solving techniques we describe in the next four chapters. 
Start working on your
vocabulary now.
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| Cracking the GRE
Three Kinds of Words
Think of all vocabulary words in terms of these three categories.
• Words you know—These are words you can define accurately. If 
you can’t give a definition of a word that’s pretty close to what a 
dictionary would say, then it isn’t a word you know.
• Words you sort of know—These are words you’ve seen or heard 
before, or maybe even used yourself, but can’t define accurately. You 
may have a sense of how these words are used, but beware! Day-to-
day usage is often different from the dictionary meaning of words, 
and the only meanings that count on the GRE are those given in the 
dictionary. ETS likes using words with secondary meanings, and some 
of the words in this category may have other definitions that you’re 
not aware of. You have to treat these words very differently from the 
words you can define easily and for which you know all the mean-
ings. Every time you encounter a word you sort of know in this book, 
be sure to look it up in the dictionary and make it a word you know
from then on. Focus your study in these words, since they will be 
easier to move into the “know” category.
• Words you’ve never seen—You can expect to see some words in this 
book you’ve never seen before. After you encounter a word like this, 
go to the dictionary and look it up! If it’s been on one GRE, there’s a 
good chance it will show up again. If you’ve never seen one of the 
words in an answer choice, don’t eliminate that choice. Focus on the 
answer choices that you can define.
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Chapter 4
Analogies
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| Cracking the GRE
WHAT YOU WILL SEE
The Verbal section of your GRE will contain six to eight analogy questions. The 
first five to seven questions of the section usually contain several analogies, so this 
type of question is very important—remember that the early questions in each 
section count the most!
ETS’s Directions
Take a minute to read the following set of directions. These are the directions ex-
actly as they will appear on your GRE. If you familiarize yourself with them now, 
you won’t even have to glance at them when you take the test. 
Directions:  In each of the following questions, a relat-
ed pair of words or phrases is followed by five pairs of 
words or phrases. Select the pair that best expresses 
a relationship similar to that expressed in the original 
pair.
What Is an Analogy?
An analogy tests your ability to recognize pairs of words that have similar relation-
ships. Your job is to determine the relationship between the original pair of words, 
we’ll call them the “stem words,” and then find an answer choice in which the 
words have the same relationship.
Let’s look at an example:
FRICTION : ABRASION ::
sterility : cleanliness
dam : flood
laceration : wound
heat : evaporation
literacy : ignorance
THE BASIC TECHNIQUE
We know from ETS’s directions that in analogy questions, a related pair of words 
or phrases is followed by five pairs of words or phrases. So ETS considers the 
words friction and abrasion to be related in some way.  What’s the relationship? 
The first step in solving a GRE analogy is to make a simple sentence that shows 
the relationship between the stem words (if you can).  In this case, we might say, 
“Friction causes abrasion.” We wouldn’t say, “Abrasive substances can sometimes 
simulate a feeling of friction.” Get it? Don’t tell a story. Just define one word in 
terms of the other. In other words, make a “defining” sentence. 
ALWAYS write  A, B, C, D, 
E  on your scratch paper 
to represent the answer 
choices.
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Analogies | 37
Process of Elimination
The best answer to an analogy question will be the pair of words in an answer 
choice that has the same relationship as the original pair. Process of Elimination is 
very helpful on analogy questions. The words of the best answer will fit exactly in 
the sentence you made for the original pair of words. If you know the words in the 
answer choice and they don’t fit into the sentence, eliminate that choice. Be sure 
to cross off answer choices on your scratch paper! If you’re not sure you can define 
the words in an answer choice, don’t eliminate that choice!  
Let’s look at our example:
FRICTION : ABRASION ::
sterility : cleanliness
dam : flood
laceration : wound
heat : evaporation
literacy : ignorance
(A) Does sterility cause cleanliness? No. So cross off choice (A) on your scratch 
paper.
(B) Does a dam cause a flood? No. Eliminate this choice.
(C) Does a laceration cause a wound? Nope. Get rid of this choice.
(D) Does heat cause evaporation? Maybe. Let’s keep this choice and look at 
the last choice.
(E) Does literacy cause ignorance? No way.
So, by Process of Elimination, the best answer choice for this analogy question 
must be (D), heat : evaporation.
Define One of the Words in Terms of the Other Word
Always try to make your sentence define one of the words in terms of the other, 
but still try to keep it short and simple. 
Here’s another example:
LISTLESS : EXCITE ::
stuffy : brag
skeptical : convince
industrious : produce
scholarly : instruct
impenetrable : ignore
Do you know the 
DICTIONARY DEFINITION 
of the word?
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| Cracking the GRE
Here’s How to Crack It
We could express the relationship between the stem words in several different ways. 
We could say, “Someone listless is difficult to excite,” or we could say, “Listless 
means difficult to excite.”  It doesn’t matter which we choose.  We don’t need to 
find the perfect sentence. All that matters is that you find a sentence that correctly 
expresses the relationship between the stem words. 
Let’s go through the answer choices.
(A) Does stuffy mean difficult to brag? No. So cross off this choice.
(B) Does skeptical mean difficult to convince? Yes, but don’t stop here. You 
should check every answer choice.
(C) Does industrious mean difficult to produce?  No. So we can eliminate this 
choice.
(D) Does scholarly mean difficult to instruct? No. Eliminate.
(E) Does impenetrable mean difficult to ignore? No. So this choice doesn’t 
work either.
The best answer is (B). Notice how the words in choice (B) fit exactly into our sen-
tence.
Do You Have to Make a Sentence from Left to Right?
No. Sometimes it’s easier to define the second word in terms of the first, so don’t 
be afraid to do that. Just be sure to plug in the answer choices in the same order 
that you used to make your sentence.
Write It Down!
This can’t be stressed enough. If you try to make your sentence “in your head,” 
you might forget it after you try a few answer choices. Then you would have to go 
back to the stem words and start all over. Even worse, if you try to just remember 
your sentence, you might change it to agree with one of the answer choices. That 
defeats the whole purpose of Process of Elimination!  
So remember, always write your sentence on your scratch paper. If you make your 
sentence from right to left, draw an arrow indicating this for that question to re-
mind you to plug in the answer choices from right to left.
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