How to Approach GRE® Reading Comprehension

To conquer GRE Reading Comprehension (RC), focus on two key skills: First, read for structure and purpose instead of obsessing over details. Next, use process of elimination to get rid of incorrect answer choices. Use high-quality, official GRE questions to sharpen these skills and develop a consistent approach to GRE Reading Comprehension.

What to Expect on GRE Reading Comprehension

First GRE Verbal Reasoning section (12 questions total): about 5 Reading Comprehension questions spread out over 2 or 3 passages.

Second GRE Verbal Reasoning section (15 questions total): about 8 Reading Comprehension questions spread out over 4 passages.

Passage length ranges from one short paragraph to several longer paragraphs. You’ll usually have to answer one question about a short passage and two or three questions about a longer passage.

Some GRE Reading Comprehension questions ask you to select ONE correct answer out of five options, while others ask you to select all answer choices that apply.

Longer GRE RC Passages: Don’t Obsess Over Details

Here’s one of the worst tactical errors you can make on GRE Reading Comprehension: if you’re trying to memorize all of the facts in a long or medium-length passage, you’re both wasting your time and missing the point of RC.

GRE Reading Comprehension questions will typically ask you to synthesize the author’s overall argument. You’ll rarely be asked to just regurgitate facts.

Just as importantly, the facts aren’t going anywhere. There’s no reason to memorize or obsess over them, or write them all down. And it’s completely fine if you miss a few details, as long as you comprehend the overall purpose behind each paragraph.

Instead of getting bogged down in the details, you should…

Read for Structure and Purpose on GRE RC Passages

Your first job when you see a GRE Reading Comprehension passage is to understand the structure of the author’s overall argument, and WHY the author has written each part of the passage.

Here’s the basic structure that we recommend to our GRE students: stop at the end of each paragraph, and ask yourself WHY the author has written the paragraph. Your focus should be on the big picture: each paragraph’s purpose and how each paragraph connects with that of the previous paragraph(s).

If you’re crystal-clear about WHY the author has written every paragraph, and how they fit together, you’ll be in great shape for the contextual RC questions that you’ll inevitably see next.

Note-Taking on GRE Reading Comprehension

As longtime GRE tutors, we know that there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to note-taking. Some people are much better at reading when they take tons of notes, because the physical act of writing something down helps them engage in the material (“kinesthetic learners”, if you like jargon). Other people disengage when they start taking notes, and they actually get worse at reading.

Here’s what really matters: if you’re going to take notes, make sure they’re rooted in the big picture of the RC passage. As you finish each paragraph, try to briefly sum up the author’s main purpose. If you’re just writing “factfactfactfactfact” on your page, you’re probably missing the important things: WHY the author has written each paragraph, and how those paragraphs connect.

The bottom line: note-taking may help you engage in a passage, but overly detail-oriented notes are not helpful on GRE Reading Comprehension.

Process of Elimination on GRE Reading Comprehension

Whenever you do anything on the GRE verbal section, you should always look for wrong answers to eliminate, not for right answers to select. If you try to take shortcuts with this process, you’ll make mistakes, especially on relatively difficult questions.

The easiest mistake to make on GRE Reading Comprehension is this: you read the question, and an answer pops into your head. You immediately notice that, say, answer choice (B) sounds an awful lot like what you were thinking. So you choose (B), and you don’t really read (C), (D), or (E).

Meanwhile, there’s some little tiny modifier in (B) that makes it wrong. One word can completely change the meaning of an answer choice, right? But if you fall in love with (B) immediately, and fail to both engage with every option and use process-of-elimination for the answers that don’t work, you can easily make a careless error. And careless errors on easy questions can quickly ruin your day on an adaptive test like the GRE.

So don’t fall in love on GRE Reading Comprehension. Instead, always make sure that you’ve assessed each answer choice and eliminated the incorrect options. This means that you’ll have to read every answer choice on every single question. But on an adaptive test, that’s an investment that you absolutely need to make.

What to Do Differently on Short GRE RC Passages

Many of the above steps apply to the shortest GRE RC passages, as well as to the longer ones. You should still read for structure and purpose, and you should still use the process of elimination.

One key difference is that on the shortest GRE RC passages, it’s possible to really zero in on the subtleties in the language. So on the shortest RC passages, the ones that are one short paragraph in length, read through the entire argument, and then ask yourself:

1. What’s the heart of the passage? If there’s a conclusion, what is it?
2. What’s the author’s logic? If there’s a conclusion, how exactly does the author reach that conclusion?
3. Am I really thinking about the argument, and especially the conclusion, in the author’s EXACT words, or am I putting words in the author’s mouth? Is there anything I should notice about the author’s word choice? Are there any modifiers that should jump off the page at me?

Once you fully understand the structure of the argument, read the question carefully and then systematically eliminate the incorrect answer choices.

Use Official GRE RC Materials Only

The creators of the GRE exam spend several thousand dollars developing each individual test question, and even the very best test-prep companies can’t possibly spend more than a tiny fraction of that amount. On GRE Reading Comprehension, the difference between a right and wrong answer might be a tiny nuance of language, and it’s unreasonable to expect non-official verbal questions to nail those nuances.

Put another way: using non-official GRE Reading Comprehension questions can do more harm than good.

So without exception, we strongly encourage you to use official practice questions from a resource such as the GRE Official Guide or the Official GRE Verbal Reasoning Practice Questions. If you’re worried about running out of official GRE Reading Comprehension questions, we strongly recommend official LSAT® Reading Comprehension questions as an alternative.

And if your underlying reading skill is the real bottleneck, our reading lists for fiction and nonfiction are the long-run fix.