How to Find a Good GRE Practice Test and Interpret Your Test Results

Anyone who plans on taking the Graduate Record Examinations, commonly known as the GRE, should take a practice test before sitting for the actual exam, GRE experts say.

Dennis Yim, director of academics with Kaplan Test Prep, says the rationale behind taking GRE practice tests is to ensure that you are ready for any type of question on test day. "You're doing all this practice so that when you get to the actual test, you will have no surprises," he says.

Yim says that some people with dreams of graduate school are afraid of taking their first GRE practice test, often called a GRE diagnostic test, because they are worried about what their score on that test might be. However, a diagnostic GRE exam provides prospective graduate students with valuable information they can use to inform the way they study for the GRE, Yim says. "The score you start with is not the score you are going to apply with," he says, adding that the sooner a grad school hopeful takes his or her diagnostic GRE test, the better.

[Read: What the GRE Test Is and How to Prepare.]

"The most important thing is that you just do one, because I think having that understanding of the challenge ahead ... (and) going through it will alleviate a lot of fears and concerns," he says.

Bronte D'Acquisto, a contributing editor at Test Prep Advisor, a free online publication that focuses on standardized tests, says applicants should set their target GRE score based on admissions statistics of the program they hope to attend.

"If your practice test shows you are very far off from your target score in all sections, enrolling in a GRE class is probably the best option," D'Acquisto, who is a test prep tutor, wrote in an email. "If your practice GRE is not too far off from your target score, then perhaps studying on your own or hiring a tutor to work with you in selected areas is the best route."

D'Acquisto notes that it is common for prospective grad students to have misconceptions about their level of preparedness for the GRE, so a GRE diagnostic exam can serve as an important reality check.

"If you take a diagnostic test prior to the start of your prep, you will be able to truly identify your strengths and weaknesses and allow that to guide your studying," she says. "For example, if you correctly answer almost all of the reading comprehension questions, but struggle with every geometry question, you will know to start working on geometry."

[See: 10 Steps to Tackle a Low GRE Score.]

D'Acquisto recommends that future GRE test-takers looking for a diagnostic GRE exam use one of the free tests provided by reputable test prep companies. Only after prospective grad students have already spent a month preparing for the GRE should they try one of the official GRE practice tests offered by the Educational Testing Service, or ETS, the organization that designs the GRE, D'Acquisto warns.

"Since ETS has only released four practice exams, they should be treated as precious commodities," she says.

Where to Find Free GRE Practice Tests and Other Practice Exams

ETS offers two free POWERPREP GRE practice tests on its website, plus it offers three other online POWERPREP practice tests for about $40 a piece.

"The POWERPREP practice tests are as close to the actual computer-delivered test as one can get," Dawn Piacentino, director of the GRE program at ETS, wrote in an email. Piacentino notes that these practice tests are designed to help future GRE test-takers become familiar with the content, time limits and format of the exam and to offer them an opportunity to test out the tools offered on the actual computer exam, such as the on-screen calculator.

D'Acquisto says that the POWERPREP GRE practice tests offer the most accurate simulation of what a GRE test-taker is likely to encounter during their actual GRE exam. "No other company can truly mimic the style of questions written by ETS," she says. "Hence, if you want to expose yourself to what you will see on test day, you need to take the POWERPREP exams ETS has released."

[Read: What Is a Good GRE Score for Graduate School Admissions?]

Nevertheless, D'Acquisto says, there are some test prep firms that do offer GRE practice tests which come close to mirroring the experience of an actual GRE exam, such as Manhattan Prep, Kaplan and Princeton Review. GRE test questions are typically phrased carefully. "What makes the GRE General Test so challenging is the level of intricacy in which the questions are written," she says. "Each question is its own puzzle that needs to be solved strategically and systematically."

How Many Practice Tests Are Necessary to Prepare for the GRE?

Piacentino says that the number of practice tests a GRE test-taker completes before his or her actual GRE test is a matter of personal preference. "We recommend that a person take at least one timed practice test to gauge their ability levels on the test," she says. "If a student is going to spend time on skill-building activities (for example, reviewing math concepts) as part of test preparation, we suggest taking a timed practice test at the start of test preparation activities and another timed practice test at the end of the skill-building activities to determine if those activities had a positive effect on their performance."

Jennifer Winward, the founder and CEO of Winward Academy, a California-based tutoring company, says one common mistake students make is to take GRE practice tests over and over again without taking sufficient time to review their test results. "The problem with this approach is that if you don't give yourself an opportunity to learn from your errors, you are simply going to repeat the same mistakes on future tests," Winward wrote in an email. "This test, test, test approach to practice is horrible for both your growth and for your confidence."

Logan Thompson, a test prep tutor for Manhattan Prep who is the author of "Beyond the Content: Mindfulness as a Test Prep Advantage," recommends that students take a maximum of one practice test per 20 hours of study time. Thompson warns that taking practice tests at a higher frequency than this doesn't typically yield good results, because it does not allow enough time to fill whatever knowledge gaps were exposed by practice tests.

How to Make Sense of GRE Practice Test Results

Thompson says that grad school applicants are sometimes confused and upset during their GRE test prep if their performance on practice tests plateaus or declines. However, he cautions this is a normal part of the test-prep process. As students gain confidence with GRE test questions, they begin to spend more time answering those questions, and that results in time-management issues, he says. Another possibility is that the student is experimenting with new test-taking strategies that wind up being valuable in the long run, but are hard to master at first, Thompson adds.

"It's like a child learning how to shoot a basketball with one hand rather than two," he says. "It's going to be better in the long run, but there's a learning curve."

After taking a practice test, it is vital to analyze the test questions you got wrong to see what happened and how that type of error can be avoided, Winward says. "A cardinal rule of learning, and that includes prepping for the GRE, is to learn from mistakes," she says. "It is essential to understand what you did wrong, what you didn't understand and how to get the correct answer."

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