{"id":12775,"date":"2020-03-19T20:11:55","date_gmt":"2020-03-19T20:11:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/?p=12775"},"modified":"2020-03-19T20:15:12","modified_gmt":"2020-03-19T20:15:12","slug":"using-the-computer-to-your-advantage-on-the-gre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/blog\/using-the-computer-to-your-advantage-on-the-gre\/","title":{"rendered":"Using the Computer to Your Advantage on the GRE"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"computer<\/p>\n

The fact that the GRE is administered on a computer is tough for a number of reasons\u2014you can\u2019t mark up the passages on the Reading Comprehension sections, for instance. It can also be visually tiring to stare intently at a screen for four hours (though many of us are used to this from doing so at work all day).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But there are also reasons why taking a test on the computer can be a <\/span>good <\/span><\/i>thing. Let\u2019s take a look.<\/span><\/p>\n

Reason #1: You can move around among questions on the GRE more quickly than you could on a paper test.<\/b><\/h4>\n

At the top of your screen, you have buttons with arrows allowing you to skip questions, mark questions for review, and view the questions that you\u2019ve marked. Any of these are doable with the click of your mouse, which is much faster than flipping through pages to find questions you skipped and marked on a paper test. So that\u2019s a plus.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One word of advice, however\u2014<\/span>because <\/span><\/i>it\u2019s so easy to skip around and mark questions for review, it can be tempting to overdo it. You should certainly feel empowered not to do the questions in order, necessarily, and to skip ones that you feel are too difficult or that are going to be less than a good use of your time, but you should be thoughtful about the number of problems you mark for review. You are unlikely to have time to redo more than two or three questions max, so if you mark more than this to revisit, you\u2019re putting yourself in a bind: You\u2019ll return to the review screen and wonder which of the eight problems you\u2019ve marked to prioritize…suddenly you\u2019re clicking on problems to view them in order to figure out which to try. It gets messy and, ironically, time-consuming.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Reason #2: Your GRE scratch paper is wide and empty, and you can use as much of it as you like.\u00a0<\/b><\/h4>\n

Unlike a paper test in which you\u2019re likely squeezing your scratch work into the margins of the test questions, you have scratch paper that\u2019s given to you before your test begins. It\u2019s a set of bare pages stapled together\u2014around two to five pages (I\u2019ve heard of people getting both and everything in between)\u2014and when\/if you run out, you simply raise your hand to request more. You can use as much scratch paper as you like.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This is something you want to take advantage of. Here are ways that you can do so:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n