EA Verbal: What’s on It, How It’s Scored, and How to Prepare

The EA verbal section is 14 questions long, answered over 30 minutes: 6 Sentence Correction, 4 Critical Reasoning, and 4 Reading Comprehension. 

The core skill being tested on EA verbal is your ability to read with precision and reason using words. If you rush through your reading and don’t pay attention, the exam will punish that tendency. 

Here’s everything you need to know about EA verbal.

How the EA Verbal Section Works

The EA verbal section gives you 14 questions and 30 minutes. Those 14 questions are divided into two testlets of 7 questions each. 

A testlet is basically a mini-test within the test: you get a batch of 7 questions, and you can move through them in any order you want. Skip to question 6, circle back to question 2, do them backwards if that’s your thing.

After you finish the first testlet, the EA adapts. If you performed well on those first 7 questions, you’ll get a harder set for your second testlet. If you didn’t perform well, you’ll get an easier set. This is the only point where the section adjusts its difficulty, and you can’t go back to the first testlet once you’ve moved on.

You can allocate your 30 minutes however you’d like across both testlets. That’s roughly 2 minutes per question on average, which is more generous than the GMAT. The EA verbal section isn’t brutally time-pressured, but you can still get into trouble if you let one question eat up 5 or 6 minutes.

The Three Question Types

EA verbal breaks down into three question types: 6 Sentence Correction, 4 Critical Reasoning, and 4 Reading Comprehension. Here’s what each one asks you to do.

Reading Comprehension gives you a passage and asks several questions about it. The best approach is to read the passage once for structure (what’s the main point, how is the argument organized) and then go to the questions. Try not to read more than what’s actually there for reading comprehension or miss key modifiers in answer choices that change their meaning entirely. Precision reading is the name of the game when it comes to Reading Comprehension.

Critical Reasoning gives you a short argument and one question about it. The approach depends on the question type, but the starting point is always the same: figure out what the argument’s conclusion is and what evidence supports it. Once you see the logical structure, you can evaluate how each answer choice interacts with it. 

Sentence Correction gives you a sentence with an underlined portion and five versions of that portion. The approach that works for most test-takers is a two-step process: first, scan the answer choices for definite grammatical errors and eliminate what you can. Then, with whatever’s left, compare the choices based on what they actually mean. For a deeper dive on how to get started with Sentence Correction, visit our beginner’s guide on the topic.

SC isn’t purely a grammar test. The EA regularly presents answer choices that are grammatically fine but change the meaning of the sentence in ways that don’t make sense. How to Approach Meaning-Based EA SC Questions goes deeper on that second step.

One thing that surprises some students: real-world writing regularly breaks the rules that EA sentence correction enforces. The EA’s version of “correct” is more rigid and literal than everyday English, so you need to train yourself to read SC questions with a different eye than you use in your day-to-day.

How to Think About Your EA Verbal Score

Before you spend weeks studying for EA verbal, make sure you actually need to. This is especially true if you’re applying to executive or part-time MBA programs, which are the majority of the programs that accept the EA.

Many executive and part-time programs use the EA differently from how full-time programs use the GMAT. Rather than treating your score as a number to maximize, they often use readiness bands, broad categories like “ready” or “needs development,” to evaluate whether you can handle the academic workload. Once you’ve achieved around 155 to 156 on the EA, further gains often don’t make much of a practical difference in admissions.

We’ve seen plenty of EA students pour hours into verbal study when their score was already where it needed to be. If you’re sitting at a 12 on EA verbal and applying to an executive program, there’s a real chance that more studying won’t change your admissions result. Check your target programs’ reported averages, take a practice test, and make an honest assessment of whether verbal is really where your study time should go.

That said, if your verbal score is genuinely holding you back, the rest of this article is for you.

Tips for EA Verbal

Anchor to the score you actually need. Look at your target programs’ EA averages (or GMAT equivalents), take a practice test to see where you stand, and figure out the difference. If the gap is small or nonexistent on verbal, shift your energy to quant or integrated reasoning instead. There’s no prize for exceeding the verbal benchmark by 3 points if your quant score is below where it needs to be.

Read precisely, or you’re cooked. This is the single most important piece of advice for EA verbal, and it applies to all three question types. Reading comp, critical reasoning, and sentence correction all reward careful reading and punish sloppy reading. If you rush through a passage and miss a qualifier, or skim an SC answer choice and don’t notice that it changes the meaning of the sentence, you’ll get the question wrong, and you probably won’t even realize why. Read everything twice. Read the question stem twice. On SC, read the full sentence including the non-underlined portion. It takes an extra few seconds, yes, but it’s a habit that really pays dividends.

Don’t get sucked into a single question. Use the flexibility of the testlet structure to your advantage. If you look at a question and don’t immediately see a clear path to the answer, flag it, make your best guess, and move on. You can circle back to flagged questions before you finish the testlet. Sometimes a question that looked impossible the first time makes perfect sense on a second read. And even if it doesn’t, you’ve protected your time for the questions you can answer correctly.

Don’t overdo sentence correction. SC is 6 of 14 questions on the verbal section, and verbal is one of three sections on the EA. That makes SC roughly one-seventh of your total EA score. You should understand the basic approach to SC: how to find definite grammar errors and how to compare answer choices based on meaning. But there’s not much value in going deep on obscure grammar rules for something that’s roughly one-seventh of the test. If you enjoy grammar, go nuts. If it’s a big weakness, study for it, but don’t let it eat up all of your study hours at the expense of everything else.

Don’t memorize question types. A lot of test-prep resources will give you elaborate taxonomies of CR question types or RC passage categories. For most EA test-takers, this is overkill. If you have a basic command of reading comp, critical reasoning, and sentence correction, and your score is in the range your programs expect, you’re done. Save the deep categorization for later, and only if your practice scores tell you there’s a specific area where you’re consistently losing points.