The verbal section of the GRE

Now that you know what kinds of words are tested on the GRE, we can look at how they are used in actual questions. Vocabulary is central to three of the four question types on the Verbal section (sentence completions, analogies, and antonyms) and pretty darn useful for the fourth (reading comprehension). Your use of language, which includes word choice, is also very important for the writing portion of the test. When answering analogy and antonym questions, the more words you can define in the stem (the words or words in the question) and in the answer choices, the greater your likelihood of choosing the correct answer to the question. Knowing which four answer choices don't work will get you to the credited response as surely as will knowing which one is right. You don't even have to know the word(s) in the correct answer, as long you can define and eliminate the ones in teh wrong answer choices. We call this the magic of Process of Elimination, or POE.

Sentence completions work in a similar way. First, you need to figure out the meaning of the words that belong in each blank. Then, you have to know the definitions of enough of the words in the answer choices to be able to narrow them down to a single answer, or at least a strong guess.

Ultimately, having a strong vocabulary is the key to getting the highest scores on the verbal section of the GRE. The difficulty level of a question on the test is determined by how many or few people on average will answer it correctly. What makes a sentence completion, analogy, or antonym question hard (ie, something that most people cannot answer correctly) is the difficulty of the vocabulary. For example, the hardest analogy may have the exact same relationship between the two words in the stem as the easiest analogy has, but the words in the former are much more obscure than those on the latter. To get the highest verbal score, you have to know the hardest words the GRE will test.