Analyzing Your GRE Practice Tests, Part 1

by Stacey Koprince Oct 28, 2013

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The purpose of taking practice tests is two-fold:

(1) You’re testing yourself to see whether you’ve learned what you have been trying to learn.

(2) You’re diagnosing your strengths and weaknesses so that you can build a study plan going forward.

These articles are based on the Manhattan Prep practice tests, but you can extrapolate to other tests that give you similar performance data.

It takes about 60 minutes to do this analysis, not counting any time spent analyzing individual problems! Feel free to do this in stages spread out over an entire day or even several days. If your brain starts feeling tired and you realize that you’re just reading and not actually analyzing any longer, take a break. I’ve already split this article into four separate parts for you, so you can use those as your natural break points.

Getting Started

Here’s what I do when I review a student’s test (or tests)!

First, naturally, I look at the score. I also check whether the student did the essays (if she didn’t, I assume the score is a little inflated) and I ask the student whether she used the pause button, took extra time or longer breaks, or did anything else that wouldn’t be allowed under official testing guidelines. All of this gives me an idea of whether the student’s score might be a bit inflated.

Ask yourself these same questions!

Problem Lists

Next, take a look at the problem lists for the Quant and Verbal sections; the problem lists show each question, in order as it was given during the test, as well as various data about those questions, including whether you answered correctly or incorrectly, how hard the question was, and how much time you spent.

(1) Accuracy

Scan down the “correct/incorrect” column to get a sense of your overall accuracy in that section, and also to see whether there are any broad trends in terms of where you answered things incorrectly.

For example, if you see a string of 4 or more questions wrong at the end, check whether you had any timing issues; perhaps you were running out of time towards the end of the section. In that case, maybe you did know how to do some or all of these individual questions but didn’t have enough time.

(2) Timing

Also look at the time spent on each question, again looking for broad trends. In particular, check whether there are any “too fast” or “too slow” questions. You can do this quickly by clicking on the word Time in the Time column; this will sort all questions by time spent, from fastest to slowest. (You can click a second time to sort from slowest to fastest and a third time to return to the original list sorted by question number.)

The tables below show the average time we have to spend on each question type, as well as the time ranges that are generally considered too fast or too slow.

Quant

Problem Type	Average	Too Fast	Too Slow
Quant Comp	1m 15s	< 45s	> 2m
All Others	2m	< 1m	>2m45s

Verbal

Problem Type	Average	Too Fast	Too Slow
Text Completions, Sentence Equiv	1m	< 30s	> 1.5m
Short Passages	2m	< 1m	> 2m45s
Long Passages: Read	2-3m	< 1m 30s	> 4m
Long Passages: Question	1m	< 30s	>2m

For any questions in the “too fast” category, take a look at the questions themselves. While working on the question, were you aware that you did NOT know how to do that question? That’s a great reason to get something wrong fast. If, on the other hand, you thought you were getting the question right, or you were forced to guess because you were running out of time—well, those obviously aren’t great reasons to answer something quickly.

Count up the “too slow” questions as well as how much time, on average, you lost on those questions. Also count the number of “too fast” incorrect questions. This provides a more accurate picture of the full cost of spending that extra time: that time also cost you “too fast” points elsewhere on the test.

If you have any timing problems at all (it is incredibly rare not to have timing problems), then read this article on Time Management and start doing what it says. (Note: that article is a 2-parter; make sure to follow the link at the end of the first half to read the second half!)

Summary

For each section, get a sense of whether any timing problems are more mild or more severe. A severe problem might include spending too much time on 5 or more problems in a single section, or spending a total of 5 or more extra minutes on the “too slow” problems, regardless of how many individual problems there are. Another metric might be answering 2+ questions in a section too quickly and incorrectly even though you did actually know how to do them correctly.

All of the above allows you to quantify just how bad any timing problems are. Seeing the data can help you start to get over that mental hurdle (“I can get this right if I just spend some more time!”) and start balancing your time better. Plus, the stats on question type and content area will help you to be more aware of where you tend to get sucked in – half the battle is being aware of when and where you tend to spend too much time.

But wait! You’re only half done. In the second part of this article, we’ll analyze the data given in the assessment reports. ?

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