Multiple Choice And Numeric Entry Question

• Use elimination

  If you're struggling on a question, write down all the answer choices on your scrap paper and cross off the ones you know are wrong.

• Guess even if you don't know

  There's no guessing penalty on the GRE, so you can only help yourself by guessing.

• Pay attention to what type of question you're answering

  But if you get a 'one or more' correct answer question without a number of answers specified, don't freak out if you pick just one. 'One or more' means it's possible that only one of the answers is correct!

• Don't be afraid to save hard questions for later

  You can mark questions for review and come back to them at the end.

• Look for patterns

  Seeing patterns in your work or in the answer choices can help you skip long and complicated calculations.

• Use the answer choices to help you

  For example, sometimes it's simpler to plug each answer choice into an equation, instead of solving the equation to find every possible answer. Also, sometimes the answer choices are obviously estimations. If that's the case, you can sometimes use estimated numbers in your calculations and save yourself a bunch of fiddly arithmetic.

Numeric Entry

The next question type is numeric entry. On numeric entry questions, you'll have to generate your own answer and enter it in a box. If the correct answer is a fraction, you'll get two boxes, one for the numerator and one for the denominator. The test is computerized, so there's no worrying about handwriting, but here's the fine print you need to know to make sure you get credit for your work on these questions:

• Be as precise as possible unless the question specifically asks you to round.
• You can enter negative numbers using the hyphen. If you remember taking the SAT, you might remember that you couldn't have a negative answer for the free-response section. That's not true on the GRE.
• Equivalent forms of the same answer are all right. For example, 2/4, 1/2, 0.5, and 0.50 would all be equally correct answers.

Some strategies for numeric entry questions are:

• Write down your work on your scrap paper, and mark it with the question number. This will help you if you need to check your answer later, or if you save a question to work on at the end of the section. If your work is neatly organized, it's easy to go back and check your logic.
• Make a guess if you have one. With the numeric entry questions, random guessing is rarely helpful since your chances of guessing right are very low. But, there's no wrong answer penalty, so if you have even an idea, go ahead and put it down.
• Just like the multiple-choice, don't be afraid to save hard questions for later. You can mark questions for review and come back to them at the end.