Читать книгу GRE 2022 For Dummies with Online Practice - Ron Woldoff - Страница 15

Within each section, each question counts exactly the same toward your score. An easy question is worth exactly the same as a hard question. Because you can move back and forth within each section, a good strategy is to skip around and answer all the easy questions first; then go back and work the hard questions. Quite simply, in each section, the more questions you get right, the higher your score for that section.

On the computer version of the exam, the second Math or Verbal section (not counting the unscored section) becomes easier or harder based on your performance. For example, if you do extremely well on the first Math section, the GRE makes the second Math section harder. Even if you don’t get as many right in the second Math section, your score will be higher than the score of someone who bombs the first Math section but answers more easier questions correctly in the second one, because GRE scoring accommodates for the difficulty level of the questions.

The strategy of bombing the first Math and Verbal sections in order to answer more questions correctly on the respective second sections is not a good one. The exam doesn’t score you based solely on the number of correct answers: It scores you based on how smart it thinks you are. So if you do great on the first Math section, the exam thinks you’re smart and gives you harder questions to see just how smart you are. If you don’t answer all the questions correctly on the second Math section, that’s okay: It’s done its job of evaluating your skills, and it knows you’re smart from the first Math section.

When you complete a practice test from Part 5, you can easily estimate your Math and Verbal scores. For the Math score, count the math questions you answered correctly and then add 130 to that number. Because the GRE has 40 math questions (two sections with 20 questions each), this method gives you an approximate score from 130 to 170. You can find your Verbal score the exact same way, because the GRE also has 40 Verbal questions. Note this method doesn’t account for the changing difficulty of the second Math and Verbal sections, but it’s still an excellent way for you to practice and track your progress.