Time FactorsĮach section of the GRE is timed - this causes a lot of trouble for students. Eventually, you can train your brain to understand the tricks unique to the GRE and untangle the questions efficiently. Overcoming this difficulty requires students to practice the GRE extensively. It’s easy to be tripped up or tricked by the wording of certain questions, resulting in a wrong answer even if you actually had the knowledge needed to solve the problem. Not only does this slow you down, but it requires you to use multiple sections of your brain at once. Rather than speaking plainly, many GRE questions require you to use your logical analysis skills to locate the correct answer, unraveling the question before solving it. While the vocabulary choices are difficult in and of themselves, many of the questions are made even harder because of the way in which the questions are worded. This will require that students brush up on their advanced English words, and it may be a particularly challenging obstacle for ESL students.
In addition, many questions ask test takers to fill in words or sets of words in blanks, challenging their sentence construction and critical thinking along with their raw knowledge of higher vocabulary. Sophisticated words are used not only for the language-focused portions of the test but across all of its problems and essay prompts. Much of the GRE’s difficulty lies in its advanced vocabulary. Let’s go over the specific difficulties you might encounter as you take the GRE. Whether it’s harder depends on your current knowledge of vocabulary and critical thinking skills. Ultimately, average students will find that the GRE is a little trickier than the SAT or ACT but may be more manageable once they discover the tricks to solving its problems. In a nutshell, the GRE is challenging because it requires students to think critically and is not as cut and dry as other exams you may have taken in the past. If you are looking for some resources to prepare for this exam, review our best GRE prep courses to find the right course for you.
The MCAT requires students to have more specific knowledge that they may have learned in undergrad like chemistry or biology. However, the GRE is less difficult than more specialized exams like the MCAT.
In addition, the majority of the math problems require higher-level reasoning or have more complicated wording - the math problems on the GRE test your critical thinking more than they challenge your actual arithmetic skills. The trick to the GRE is that it has more challenging vocabulary and reading sections. The GRE is typically considered more difficult compared to the ACT or SAT.