Scores, Exam Pattern & Everything You Need To Know About GRE If You Are Planning For Masters Abroad!

Deepak Rajavarapu Updated on Feb 2, 2018

“Study Abroad”, A dream for many of us. As they say, In India every student becomes an engineer first and then thinks about what to do next? Some prefer corporate, some wants to get into core companies. Those who are interested to get into research field and wanted to get into the subject to the core, they prefer going abroad for studies. Overseas education offers many opportunities for the students and helps them explore the world in whole new dimension. And then comes the question How? There are lot of countries and lot of colleges and then there are lot of courses.. How to choose and how to apply for them?

Answering all your questions, from exams queries to educational loans for abroad studies, study abroad scholarships to study abroad consultants, this series is for all the aspirants who are planning to study abroad. So let’s start this with the different types of exams and how they are useful to plan our overseas education.

GRE, GMAT, IELTS, TOEFL, SAT and PTE these are the main exams which students need to take to study abroad. Universities/ Colleges look out for the score as per pre-requisite for particular course in all the Countries. If the scores are not there, they will get conditional admits but not an unconditional admit. A conditional offer means you still need to meet the requirements – usually exam results. An unconditional offer means you've got a place, although there might still be a few things to arrange. A student cannot apply for visa with conditional admit so it is mandatory for the students to have these required scores.

GRE - Graduate Record Examination

GRE is the pre-requisite exam that is required to pursue MS in United States of America. The cost to take the test is US$205(Approx Rs.13,000/-) , although ETS will reduce the fee under certain circumstances.

Exam Pattern – GRE is not an adaptive test on question by question basis, rather by section, so that the performance on the first verbal and math sections determine the difficulty of the second sections presented. This online examination comprises of six sections. Analytical section followed by two verbal sections and two quantitative and either an experimental or research section. These sections may come in any order. The total exam takes approximately 3 hours 45 minutes to complete.

Topic wise break up –

1.Verbal - The verbal sections consists of comprehensions, sentence completion, text completion and critical reasoning. There will be 20 questions that are to be answered in 30min.

2.Quantitative - The quantitative sections assess basic high school level mathematical knowledge and reasoning skills . There will be 20 questions that are to be answered in 35min.

3.Analytical - The analytical writing section consists of two different essays, an "issue task" and an "argument task". The writing section is graded on a scale of 0–6, in half-point increments.

a.Issue Task : The test taker is given 30 minutes to write an essay about a selected topic. One can access the pool of tasks on the ETS website.

b.Argument Task : The test taker will be given an argument (i.e. a series of facts and considerations leading to a conclusion) and asked to write an essay that critiques the argument. 30min will be allotted for this and we can find the topics for the argument task in ETS website.

4.Experimental - The experimental section, which can be either verbal or quantitative, contains new questions ETS is considering for future use. Although the experimental section does not count towards the test-taker's score, it is unidentified and appears identical to the scored sections.

Score – An examinee can miss one or more questions on a multiple-choice section and still receive a perfect score of 170. Likewise, even if no question is answered correctly, 130 is the lowest possible score. Scoring 300 above is termed as good score. The score is valid for 5 years.

What is the weightage of GRE score in admission process? What else do they consider along with GRE score? In addition to GRE scores, admission to graduate schools depends on several other factors, such as GPA, letters of recommendation, and statements of purpose. Furthermore, unlike other standardized admissions tests (such as the SAT, LSAT, and MCAT), the use and weight of GRE scores vary considerably not only from school to school, but also from department to department and program to program.

The Application process after exam: Once the scores are released, we need to apply for interested courses at different Universities. This is very big procedure and one should need some guidance for applying. There are many overseas education consultants like IMFS, who will look after all these things. From University applications to Visa procedures they will guide us from end to end. They would also be guiding us for education loan for abroad studies. They will also train us to get adapted to foreign culture.