The GRE CBT Format

Unlike most standardized tests, the GRE is not typically administered in a paper-and-pencil format. The vast majority of students can take the GRE only on computer, in the form of a computer-based test, or CBT for short.*

When compared to the paper-and-pencil format, the CBT format has both advantages and disadvantages. One major advantage is scheduling the test date. In the past, the GRE was administered only on specific dates throughout the year. Now, due to computer-based testing, students can schedule the test for whatever time is most convenient. Another advantage is that a computer-based test uses significantly fewer questions to determine the score than a paper-and-pencil test, making the total testing time less on the CBT and giving you more time per question on the CBT than you would have on the paper-based test.

The main disadvantage of the CBT, however, is that you cannot skip any questions or return to a previous question to change your answer. Each question must be answered in the order it is presented, and you cannot view the next question until you have entered a response for the one already on your screen. The reason for this lies in how the test is scored: basically, the computer needs to know whether to present a harder or easier question next, and the only way to determine that is to record an answer for the current question first.

The other significant drawback to the CBT is that the pacing strategy ideal for a paper-based test must be abandoned and replaced with a CBT-specific strategy. On the paper-and-pencil test, questions are presented more or less in order of difficulty: within each section, the questions start out fairly easy and become progressively more difficult. Most students breeze through the first several questions and spend most of their time working on the more difficult questions later in the section. This seemingly sensible approach would prove disastrous if applied to a computer-based test, since the first questions in a CBT section are not easy and the subsequent questions do not necessarily get increasingly difficult. In fact, one test-taker could easily see twenty extremely difficult questions, while a person sitting five feet away, taking the same test, might not see even one.

The questions on the CBT also do not all count the same toward a student’s score; a correct answer on one question may raise the score much more than a correct answer on another question. By contrast, on a paper-based test all questions are weighted equally, regardless of difficulty. This is a critical difference, because it means that some questions on a CBT are more “important” than others and thus demand more time and attention from the student looking to maximize his or her score.

TestMasters has developed a systematic pacing strategy specifically for the CBT. This strategy takes advantage of the way the test is designed, thereby enabling our students to use their time efficiently. Our students spend more time on the questions that count the most and less time on the ones that don’t. TestMasters students learn our CBT-specific pacing strategy in the TestMasters GRE Course and work through several computer-based practice GRE tests in order to master it.