Breaking News: The GRE Just Got Sliced in Half

I’ve worked with students for almost two decades who hate the GRE. It’s long, they haven’t taken a math class in several years (so the quant section is overwhelming), the registration fee ($220 in most U.S. cities) is pricey, it’s anxiety-producing to sit in a test center for four hours, standardized testing is fraught with inequities, tutoring is costly in time, money and effort, the list goes on.

GOOD NEWS! ETS heard you (and me) and they just sliced the test in half.

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KEY UPDATES ON THE NEW GRE

If you are considering graduate school (including business school and law school as many programs take the GRE vs. GMAT or LSAT) here are key updates you should know:

The GRE is currently 3 hours and 45 min. As of September 22, 2023, it will be 1 hour and 58 min.
Currently, GRE test takers get their official results in 10-15 days. That will now be 8-10 days.
They dropped some of the most annoying sections: the “analyze and argument” questions within the Analytical Writing section, the unscored section, and 46 verbal reasoning and quantitative reasoning questions.
Here’s the GRE’s new layout:
- 30 min: Analytical Writing –1 section, 1 essay task
- 47 min: Quantitative Reasoning –2 sections with 27 questions total
- 41 min: Verbal Reasoning ––2 sections with 27 questions total

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The GRE resources and questions that exist now will still be good prep but two shortened PowerPrep practice tests come out in early September 2023.
You can register NOW to take the GRE on September 22 and later. If you have an August test date, I suggest moving it to September 22 or later. This is likely going to be an easier, and certainly shorter, exam. Test registration dates in September and October are going to fill FAST!
The GRE is a big rival of the GMAT. It’s no coincidence that the shorter GRE will start September 22. GMAC announced in March the new GMAT (likely launching October 2023) will be sliced by one hour and will have just 3 45-min. sections. It was 3 hours and 7 min. long and by late fall will be 2 hours and 25 min.
- Registration for the new GMAT does not start until August 29, 2023 and the new GMAT “Focus Edition” shorter test doesn’t come out until “Q4,” meaning October 2023 at the earliest, but could be anytime between October and December 2023.
- Either way —the GRE WINS and their new, shorter test comes out September 22.

Done with a standardized test for graduate school in under two hours? Yes, please!

GRE: WIDELY ACCEPTED

If you’re applying for a Masters, PhD, MBA or Law program this fall, you just got GREAT news! Almost all MBA programs accept the GRE and about half of law schools will accept a GRE instead of an LSAT.

Most graduate school programs are now “score optional” and not “score blind.” But, remember, “optional” in admissions land generally means “accepted students do it.”

In today’s uber-competitive graduate school admissions arenas, it’s not an option to skip “optional” parts of your application and thankfully, ETS just made taking the GRE a lot easier to take and less stressful to pursue.

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Dr. Kristen Willmott

Senior Private Counselor & Graduate School Admissions Director at Top Tier Admissions

Having worked as an Admissions and Financial Aid Officer for Harvard University for four years, Kristen brings a depth of experience to Top Tier Admissions. She has over 20 years of experience working in higher education. Kristen has a PhD in Education with a concentration in Higher Education from the University of Rochester, an M.S. in Business Management from the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) and a B.A. in English from Ithaca College. Her PhD dissertation won the International Susan B. Anthony Institute Dissertation Award. In her role at Harvard, Kristen oversaw admissions for 17 departments and was also responsible for distributing funding from the National Science Foundation Fellowships Program and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Student Research Fellowship Program. Kristen has previously worked as a substitute K-12 teacher, as adjunct faculty at three universities in MA and NY, and as an educational researcher having recently (Oct. 2020) published a book on faculty in academia and in academic journals such as the Journal of Critical Scholarship on Higher Education and Student Affairs, Academic Leadership Journal, and the American Association of Behavioral and Social Sciences Journal.

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