The GRE contains 3 sections. There’s the GRE Quantitative Section, and the Analytical Writing Section, and of course, the Verbal Section.

The Verbal Section

Usually considered the ‘toughest’ section of the GRE, the Verbal section primarily tests your vocabulary, as well as your general understanding of the English language and structure.

You get 30 minutes to complete 30 questions, which means the timing is tighter than the quantitative section. All questions here are multiple choice, so you can always guess if you have no idea what the answer might be. Average scores on the Verbal section tend to be quite a bit lower than on the Quantitative section, which means even if you don’t get perfect you can still get into a relatively high percentile.

What’s in the Verbal Section?

The Verbal section contains 4 diffferent types of questions:

Sentence Completion: You are given a sentence with one or two blanks. You must pick the best word out of 5 options to complete the sentence. There will be 5-7 sentence completion questions on the GRE, and they can be a bit confusing. The best way of answering these is first coming up with the right ‘type’ of word that completes the sentence best, and then looking for closest word out of the options given.

Analogies: You’re given a pair of words, and must select another pair out of 5 options that best expresses the same relationship as the original pair. For example, FURNITURE:CHAIR has the same relationship as COLOR:GREEN, but not as EMOTION:FEELING. You can expect around 6-8 of these questions around.

Antonyms: This time you get just one word, and must select the one option that’s most nearly opposite of the given word. For example, if you’re given the word COMPLACENT, a good antonym would be ANXIOUS. There are usually about 8-10 antonym questions on the GRE.

Reading Comprehension: This sounds simple, you get a passage, and after reading the passage you have to answer related questions. There’s usually one long passage in the GRE of 50-60 lines, and 1-3 shorter ones of 20-25 lines in length. You’ll be asked several questions per passage, in total about 6-10 reading comprehension questions. The questions usually look for specific information hidden within the sentences of the passage rather than the general meaning or structure.

How can you ace the Verbal Section?

First, and formost, increase your vocabulary! This is incredibly important, since nearly all questions on the GRE Verbal section rely very heavily on vocabulary. When practicing for the GRE, a big dictonary will be your best friend. Seriously, you need as much vocabulary as you can get, because all 4 sections require you to understand the words in the question in order to answer correctly, otherwise you’d have to guess every question.

Other than improving your vocabulary, practice! This may sound trivial, but you really have to practice in order to be able to put your understanding of new words to use. Take as many practice tests as you can- we’ll give you a few free ones at the bottom of this page. Practice is crucial, and more you practice the better your chances are to ace the GRE Verbal Section.

Scoring on the Verbal Section

Like the Quantitative Section, you’ll get a verbal score between 200-800. A score of about 630 will already put you in the 90th percentile, and the avergae score is around 450.

Online GRE Practice Tests

Practice here for some of the verbal section tests:

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More of the GRE

Don’t forget to practice for the other important sections of the GRE, the Analytical Writing Section and the ever-popular Quantitative Section.