The GRE Reading Comprehension section is similar to that of the SAT and ACT exams but more challenging. This course will teach you to “read between the lines.” Much of the reading techniques we discuss are also covered in our Critical Reasoning chapter. The Reading Comprehension section is much like Critical Reasoning, but with a longer attention span for its 250+ word passages.
Want a diagnostic before going too far into this course? You can take a sample GRE with analytics and video explanations for each question.
View reading comprehension passages as if they were a reality TV show where you have been dropped in a rain forest with no clues where you are or how to proceed. On the GRE , a reading passage will be dropped in front of you and you will have no background on it whatsoever:
….And your mastery of those 450 words will determine your future graduate school and career options.
The passages are intentionally jargon-filled and dense. In school you were taught to read for detail, but on the GRE you would run out of time doing that. In order to perform well on this test, you will have to re-learn how to read.
Most traditional financial-market analysis studies ignore financial markets’ deficiencies in allocation because of analysts’ inherent preferences for the simple model of perfect competition.
That’s just one sentence. You will have to process and parse through sentence after sentence like that while also preparing for the questions that follow. If you know beforehand, however, what to look for, what to cue in on, and what to ignore in a passage, you will be able to stay in control and not get bogged down.
You are not reading the passages for pleasure or to acquire knowledge; you are reading for the singular purpose of answering the questions as efficiently and accurately as possible. To help you do this, we’ve created a five-step methodology.
