GRAD School / MBA News and GMAT / GRE Strategy

One of the main challenges of the GRE’s Reading Comprehension questions is that, unlike math, there are no set formulas to learn. This can make Reading Comprehension seem harder, if not impossible, to study for. It seems like the necessary skills are more deeply ingrained—you either have them, or you don’t.

But that’s actually not true. You actually can take lots of steps in your GRE prep to improve your ability to work with Reading Comprehension questions. In this article, we’ll take you through some of the most powerful tips and strategies you can use to improve your ability to tackle GRE Reading Comprehension questions and raise your score.

Perhaps the most overwhelming thing about the GRE is the test itself, as a whole. This article from HappySchools outlines the content and general format of the exam. The terrain covered by even the most conservative subsections can feel constantly in flux – and when most questions are asked only a single time on the test, prepping on a smaller scale often feels futile. But further compartmentalization actually breaks the test into fully digestible pieces, and when we look at the species of questions that exist in a micro-sense, we can see better when certain skills are being evaluated more than others. Noticing these differences is key to succeeding on the test, as going without often leads us to throw all of our skills at each question, a process that is draining and overwhelming. By noting the differences and curating our approach in a more fine-tuned way, we can save energy for later in the test, and have a better sense of question-consciousness, where we as test takers are responding to the questions as they are being asked, and not as we fear them to be.