GRE Guides and Requirements

The GRE General Test is used for admission to graduate programmes, mainly in the United States and increasingly elsewhere. It measures verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning and analytical writing, and unlike IELTS or TOEFL it is not an English proficiency test: most international applicants need both.

Requirements have shifted in recent years. Many programmes have made the GRE optional or dropped it, while others, particularly competitive engineering, computer science and economics programmes, still expect it or treat a strong score as an advantage. That makes it important to check each programme before you decide whether to sit the test.

The guides here cover how to prepare and how long it takes, the scores that leading universities typically see from admitted students, university-by-university requirement pages, and how the GRE compares with the GMAT for business school applicants. They are written for international students planning a master’s or PhD abroad who need to fit GRE preparation alongside an English test and the rest of their application.