The overall testing time for the Computer-based GRE® revised General Test is about 3 hours and 45 minutes. There are 6 sections with a 10-minute break following the second section.

The revised computer-based test has some unique characteristics. You will begin with the Analytical Writing section, in which you have thirty minutes per essay to type responses to two essay prompts. Next, you will work through 2-3 Verbal and 2-3 Quantitative sections, though the order will vary. One out of the five multiple-choice sections will be experimental, meaning it won’t count towards your score, but you will not find out which one.

While many of the Verbal and Quantitative questions are traditional multiple-choice questions, where only one answer is correct, the revised GRE also includes questions with non-traditional formats. These include multiple choice questions with more than one correct answer, fill-in-the-blanks, and questions that require you to select text from within a passage. (The test was significantly revised in August 2011, so test preparation materials from before that will be out-of-date.)

The New GRE is adaptive between sections but not within them. For all test takers, the first section will consist of questions ranked as easy, medium, and difficult. You may answer questions in any order, skip questions, and mark questions to return to later within that one section. Test takers can use a Review Screen to navigate between questions and view which questions they have answered, marked, and/or skipped. Once the section is complete, however, you may not return to that section. The second Verbal and Quantitative sections, respectively, will be adjusted for difficulty based on how you did on the first section. If you got most of the questions correct, you will get more difficult questions in the second section. If you got several questions incorrect, you will get easier questions. If you get more difficult questions, your scaled score will be adjusted to be higher than someone who got easier questions. Within the second section, however, you may still skip questions and answer the questions in any order. Once the section is presented to you, each question counts equally towards your final score, so it is best to skip especially difficult or time-consuming questions and come back to them after answering the simpler questions. There is no guessing penalty, so you should answer every question.