Welcome | Achievable GRE

When you complete this course, you will have the tools and experience to attack any GRE problem. We understand that each student has different needs and strengths. With that in mind, we have created a course that not only teaches you all the principles and strategies you should know but also adapts to your mistakes and focuses on your problem areas before moving on.

ETS has changed the GRE structure on September 22, 2023

Key points:

The exam has shorter question sets and is shorter overall
The content of the exam remains the same

You can view the details on the ETS website.

Achievable GRE has been updated for the new shorter GRE

Now that the cutover period has passed, you’re only able to take the new “short” exam sections. If you started studying with us before the short version was released, you can still review all exam sections you’ve taken, including the original “long” ones.

These updates are included with your existing course access; there is no additional fee and no additional purchase required.

Think of this course as hiking on a trail. As you master specific skills, you can continue on the path and reach further heights. Along the way, you should take time to recall the strategies and principles you have learned in past lessons, drilling the review quizzes to keep your skills sharp. While it is possible to jump around if you’d like to focus on specific lessons, we recommend you go through the chapters in the order presented.

If you feel any reading material of quizzes could use additional explanation or clarification, please leave us a note using the feedback form, and feel free to reach out anytime :-)

We hope you enjoy your adventure on the Achievable trail to GRE success!

GRE scoring

The GRE is comprised of three sections, with these official names:

Verbal Reasoning (verbal)
Quantitative Reasoning (quant)
Analytical Writing (essay)

You will be given a specific score on each of the three sections. The verbal and quantitative sections are both scored on a scale of 130-170. The analytical writing section is scored from 0 to 6. Perhaps more importantly, you will also be given a percentile. The percentiles represent where you rank among other test takers. The higher your percentile, the more people you beat. This is a more important metric because raw scores (e.g. 19/20 questions correct) are known to have different correlating percentiles (e.g. 98th percentile) from year to year. ETS publishes statistics from time to time, and you can see which scores currently correlate with which specific percentiles. Our blog also offers some insights into average GRE scores for specific grad school programs.

GRE format

This information is up-to-date with the current “short” exam format after the GRE September 22, 2023 changes.

The exam always starts with the Analytical Writing section. However, the order in which you’ll receive the other sections will be randomized. We’ve included a summary breakdown of the exam below.

Section type	Total questions	Total time	Sections
Analytical Writing	1 essay	30 min	1
Quantitative Reasoning	27 multiple choice (12 + 15)	47 min (21 + 26)	2
Verbal Reasoning	27 multiple choice (12 + 15)	41 min (18 + 23)	2

GRE adaptive difficulty

Another important point about the GRE is that it is adaptive from section to section. Depending on how well you do on the first verbal and quant sections, the second graded verbal and quant sections will be harder or easier. The first section will be of middle difficulty. If you score well in this first section, you’ll be given more difficult questions for your second graded section of the same type. Don’t try to game the system! If you try doing poorly to start just so you have easier questions later, you’ll be digging yourself into a hole. In order to get a top score, you’ll need to answer all questions of all difficulty correctly.