The Graduate Record Exam is a salient part of your grad-school application. The test is designed to weed out those who are not yet ready to take on graduate-level courses. You are tested on your verbal and math reasoning skills and the ability to write compelling arguments.

Most people’s GRE prep consists of prep books or online courses. You have to memorize words, learn how to decipher complex passages, and build your arithmetic skills. Since GRE is one of the most popular standardized tests, there is no shortage of prep material. You can find numerous high-quality books and courses from a variety of different companies.

The most crucial part of GRE prep for many is the practice questions and full-length tests. Any high-quality book or online course would offer hundreds of practice questions and multiple full-length tests. The practice is half the battle for attaining a high score, and many first-timers wonder whether the actual GRE is the same difficulty as the practice material.

Is actual GRE harder than practice tests? 

Yes and no. It depends on what practice material you are using to prepare for GRE. It is a commonly known fact amongst test-prep circles that the most accurate practice material always comes from the test makers. In GRE’s case, ETS is the company that administers GRE, and they also publish high-quality GRE guides containing official practice questions.

So if you use ETS’s official GRE prep material to study for the test, then you can rest assured that the actual GRE would be of the same difficulty. However, if you use third-party prep material like Kaplan, Manhattan, or Princeton Review, your mileage will vary.

The characteristics that set genuine GRE questions apart from third-party ones are the nuances and subtle context clues. This is a tricky thing to get right, and often test prep companies either miss the mark entirely or overshoot.

Missing the mark in this sense means that the practice questions are so easy that they end up doing you more harm than good. If you set your expectation at a certain level by solving easy problems, you will be devasted on test day to find out what it’s really like.

On the other hand, some test prep companies will make their questions needlessly and unrealistically tricky, leaving you frustrated from the get-go.

This is why achieving that balance between needlessly tricky and overly easy is so important. Having been in the test-prep industry for many years, I find that the ETS official GRE guides are the best resource a student can use.

If you are confused about what to get, buy the ETS GRE guides without giving it a second thought. Other prominent players in the industry, such as Kaplan, Manhattan, Princeton Review, and Barrons, have their takes on the practice material. Not to say that they don’t make competent guides, but the practice questions aren’t as realistic and consistent.

So, in short, The actual GRE is not more challenging than practice tests as long as you study from official material.

How Can I get an idea of actual GRE’s difficulty without buying ETS Guides?

Firstly, I would recommend that you get the official practice material if you are serious about your GRE prep. However, if you want to get a taste of what GRE feels like, you can head over here and solve two official full-length practice tests for free.

ETS provides two official full-length practice tests for free on their website. You only have to sign up and you are good to go. One important tip to remember here is replicating the actual testing environment when taking the practice test.

You have to abide by the allotted time duration and avoid using anything extra that you won’t have access to on the test. This way, you get an accurate idea of what the GRE feels like.

How can I avoid test-day surprises?

Time yourself

One of the biggest mistakes students make is that they don’t time themselves when taking practice tests. Not only should you do this for full-length practice tests but also for individual questions. When you get to a particular stage in your prep where you feel confident about your abilities, start measuring how long it takes you to solve complex questions. 

You will be surprised how things change when you introduce the clock. The GRE wouldn’t be as challenging if you had four mins to solve a question instead of a minute and a half. You need to get used to the time-induced stress in advance if you want to score well.

Don’t use a physical calculator.

ETS includes a simple on-screen calculator when you take the GRE test. This calculator only has essential arithmetic functions like addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and square root. It would help avoid using a physical calculator, especially a scientific calculator, during your practice sessions.

Moreover, try doing simple arithmetic in your mind instead of using the calculator for every little calculation. Time is of the essence when it comes to GRE, and if you rely on the calculator too much, you will run out of time. 

Avoid using spell check. 

When you are typing on your computer, avoid using spell and grammar checks in your day-to-day life because these won’t be available to you during the AWA section. Most of us don’t realize this until we stop using them, but the help we get from Microsoft world and Grammarly makes us rely on these tools. 

Don’t Skip Sections on practice tests.

Say you are preparing the GRE verbal portion first and testing yourself by doing some practice tests. If you skip the quant sections on your practice tests thinking that you don’t need them, your score will suffer. Here is what happens. GRE has six sections, two are verbal, two are Quant, One is AWA, and One is an unscored experimental section that can either be verbal or quant.

The only section that we know for sure comes first is the AWA section. The preceding sections can either be math or verbal. What if a verbal section showed up at the very last? You won’t have the endurance to give it the same mental effort as the other sections. 

Hence, whenever you are doing mock tests, always attempt the actual test. Don’t skip sections. This is true for both math and verbal.