GRE Practice Questions (2026) — Free Sample Questions with Answers

16 free GRE questions from our 150-question bank, grouped by content domain. Each answer explains why the right option is right — and why every wrong option is wrong.

Verbal Reasoning (8)Quantitative Reasoning (8)

0 of 16 answered — answer a question to check it Take a full GRE practice test

Verbal Reasoning

Question 1

The essayist's tone is difficult to classify: her praise of the city's new monuments is so extravagant that many readers suspect it of being _____.

Select the two answer choices that, when used to complete the sentence, fit the meaning of the sentence as a whole and produce completed sentences that are alike in meaning.

Select all that apply.

Show answer & explanation

Answer: C, E

earnest: Means sincere; readers would not "suspect" sincerity, and no other choice means the same thing.

pedantic: Overly concerned with minor details or learning; extravagant praise does not suggest pedantry.

insincere: Fits: praise so extravagant that it seems over the top invites the suspicion that it is not meant; the uncertain tone supports this.

sycophantic: Tempting because extravagant praise can be flattery, but "sycophantic" means fawning to win favor, a claim about motive rather than about whether the praise is meant, and no other choice is alike in meaning to it.

disingenuous: Fits: not candid; pretending to feel something one does not, which is what readers suspect of the excessive praise; alike in meaning to "insincere."

effusive: Tempting because it echoes "extravagant," but the praise is openly effusive; readers would not need to "suspect" it of being so.

The verb "suspect" signals a hidden quality behind an obvious one; overstated praise makes readers doubt that it is meant. Words that describe the praise's surface ("effusive") or a flatterer's motive ("sycophantic") have no partner.

Question 2

Critics praised the documentary for its _____ treatment of a controversial subject, noting that the filmmakers presented every faction's arguments without visible bias.

Select the two answer choices that, when used to complete the sentence, fit the meaning of the sentence as a whole and produce completed sentences that are alike in meaning.

Select all that apply.

Show answer & explanation

Answer: B, C

partisan: Means favoring one side; "without visible bias" rules it out, and no other choice means the same thing.

evenhanded: Fits: fair to all sides, which is restated by "presented every faction's arguments without visible bias."

impartial: Fits: not favoring any party, the meaning given by "without visible bias"; alike in meaning to "evenhanded."

lurid: Sensational or shocking; nothing in the clue concerns sensationalism, and critics would not praise it here.

exhaustive: Tempting because presenting "every faction's arguments" sounds thorough, but the clue "without visible bias" concerns fairness, and no other choice means "exhaustive."

cursory: Hasty and superficial; presenting every faction's arguments suggests thoroughness, and the praise does not fit.

Look for the phrase that restates the blank ("without visible bias") and choose the two words that mean the same thing. "Exhaustive" fits part of the sentence but has no partner.

Question 3

The early settlers regarded the region's marshes as , a source of disease and an obstacle to farming, and they drained them with . Only in the twentieth century did ecologists begin to recognize the wetlands as , filtering water and sheltering countless species.

Show answer & explanation

Answer: (1) pestilential, (2) alacrity, (3) indispensable

Solve the blank with the strongest clue first (the appositive for blank (i)), then let the sentence logic carry you: eager draining follows from contempt, and "Only in the twentieth century" reverses the judgment.

Question 4

Critics expected the composer's late quartets to be valedictory and somber; instead, the works are strikingly , full of dance rhythms and sly jokes at the expense of musical convention.

Show answer & explanation

Answer: (1) ebullient

"Instead" means the blank should be the opposite of the expectation ("valedictory and somber"); the details after the comma confirm the direction.

Question 5

Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the council’s conclusion?

In the three years since the city of Larkfield installed brighter LED streetlights in its downtown district, reported nighttime burglaries there have fallen by 30 percent. Over the same period, reported nighttime burglaries in the rest of the city, where the older streetlights remain, have stayed roughly constant. The city council has therefore concluded that brighter lighting deters burglary, and it plans to reduce burglary citywide by installing LED streetlights in every district.

Show answer & explanation

Answer: D

LED streetlights cost less to operate than the older streetlights they replaced.: Operating cost has nothing to do with whether lighting deters burglary.

Several other cities that installed LED streetlights also reported fewer nighttime burglaries.: This supports the conclusion by showing the same pattern elsewhere.

Residents of several other districts have asked the council for brighter streetlights.: Residents’ wishes say nothing about whether lighting reduces burglary.

Shortly before the new lights were installed, downtown businesses hired a security firm to patrol the district every night.: Correct. The patrols are another cause that could explain the downtown drop, so the decline need not be due to the lighting.

Daytime burglaries in the downtown district remained roughly constant over the three years.: If anything this supports the lighting explanation: only the nighttime rate, which lighting could affect, fell.

An argument that infers cause from a before-and-after correlation is weakened by another factor that changed at the same time and place.

Question 6

The primary purpose of the passage is to

For generations, historians of cartography told the story of their subject as a steady march toward accuracy. Medieval world maps such as the large mappae mundi that hung in cathedrals, with Jerusalem at their center and east at the top, were treated as charming failures, the products of an age that let religious belief override observation. Progress, on this account, arrived with the recovery of Ptolemy’s system of coordinates, the spread of printed sea charts, and eventually the national surveys of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, whose triangulated grids were taken as the standard against which every earlier map should be measured. A map’s worth lay in how closely it approximated the shape of the land as a modern survey would record it, and maps that failed this test were catalogued chiefly as evidence of what their makers did not yet know.

In the late twentieth century, a number of scholars began to argue that this narrative misunderstood what maps had been made to do. The mappae mundi, they observed, were never intended to guide travelers; they compressed sacred history, legend, and geography into a single image meant for contemplation, and judging them by the standards of navigation was rather like faulting a stained-glass window for admitting too little light. These scholars went further, insisting that even the most rigorous modern maps embody choices—what to name, what to omit, which direction to place at the top, whose boundaries to draw—that reflect the interests of the institutions commissioning them, whether churches, trading companies, or states. On this view, every map is an argument as well as a record, and the historian’s task is to recover the purposes it served rather than to grade its precision.

The newer approach has widened the field considerably, but it carries risks that its proponents have not always acknowledged. To call every map an argument can make it difficult to say why some maps are better than others, and few historians would be comfortable concluding that a sixteenth-century chart that wrecked ships was merely expressing a different set of values. In addition, the documents that would reveal why a particular map was made are often missing; for most surviving medieval maps we know neither who drew them nor who paid for them, so the purposes attributed to them are frequently inferred from the maps themselves. Scholars who describe “the intentions of the mapmaker” may therefore be reading back into an object the very meanings they have set out to find. The lesson is not that accuracy should once again become the sole measure of a map, but that claims about purpose require the same evidentiary discipline that the older historians applied to claims about coastlines.

Show answer & explanation

Answer: E

argue that accuracy should again be the chief criterion for judging historical maps: The last sentence rejects this directly: “The lesson is not that accuracy should once again become the sole measure of a map.”

explain why medieval mapmakers chose to place Jerusalem at the center of their world maps and east at the top: The placement of Jerusalem is a descriptive detail in paragraph 1; the passage never explains the choice or makes it its subject.

defend the scholars of the late twentieth century against the charge that they ignore accuracy: No such charge is reported, and the author does not defend these scholars; paragraph 3 raises problems for them.

contrast the methods of medieval mapmakers with those of eighteenth-century national surveys: Both appear only as parts of the older historians’ narrative; the passage is about how historians interpret maps, not a comparison of mapping techniques.

describe a shift in how historians judge maps and qualify the newer view: Correct. Paragraph 1 gives the older accuracy-centered story, paragraph 2 the late-twentieth-century challenge, and paragraph 3 the “risks” of that challenge, without returning to the older view.

For primary-purpose questions, summarize each paragraph in a few words (older view → challenge → qualification) and choose the answer that covers all of them in the author’s measured tone.

Question 7

Which of the following findings, if true, would most clearly favor the "implicit advice" explanation over the inertia explanation?

Show answer & explanation

Answer: C

Simplifying the enrollment form raised participation by about as much as automatic enrollment did.: This is what the passage says the inertia explanation predicts, so it favors inertia.

Workers who opted out of automatic enrollment were, on average, older than those who stayed in.: Age differences among those who opted out bear on neither explanation.

Simplifying the enrollment form raised participation far less than automatic enrollment did.: Correct. The passage says that if defaults are read as advice, "simplification alone should accomplish little"; inertia predicts simplification would work "nearly as much." A small effect from simplification fits advice, not inertia.

Many automatically enrolled workers said they had never read their plan's documents.: Not reading the documents fits inertia at least as well as advice, so it does not favor advice.

Automatic enrollment raised participation at small firms as well as at large ones.: Both explanations predict higher participation under a default, so this does not distinguish them.

To favor one hypothesis over another, pick the result their predictions disagree on. The last sentence gives the split: simplification helps under inertia but not under advice.

Question 8

The primary purpose of the passage is to

For much of the twentieth century, critics treated the serial publication of Victorian fiction as an embarrassment to be explained away. Novels issued in monthly or weekly parts, the argument ran, were shaped less by artistic design than by the demands of the market: authors padded installments to fill a fixed number of pages, introduced sensational incidents to keep readers buying the next number, and abandoned promising subplots when sales faltered. On this account, the sprawling, digressive quality of many Victorian novels was a scar left by commerce, and the critic's task was to recover whatever coherent work lay beneath it. The revised single-volume editions that followed serial runs were accordingly treated as the authoritative texts, and the original parts as little more than rough drafts. Serialization, in short, was something a good novel survived rather than something it used.

Beginning in the 1980s, a number of scholars reversed this judgment. Serialization, they contended, was not merely a constraint but a formal resource. Each number had to satisfy as a unit in its own right while also advancing a larger design, a double obligation that encouraged authors to think in terms of rhythm, recurrence, and delay. Because a part-issued novel might be read over a year and a half or more, its readers lived alongside its characters in something like real time, and authors could exploit this duration, allowing a reputation to decay slowly across several numbers or letting the passage of actual seasons echo the seasons within the story. The interval between installments, moreover, invited readers to speculate, to discuss the story with one another, and even to write to the author, so that the novel became a kind of public conversation rather than a finished object delivered whole. What earlier critics called padding, the revisionists argued, was often the deliberate cultivation of suspense and anticipation that the form made possible.

Yet the revisionist case, persuasive as it is, risks replacing one simplification with another. To praise serialization as a uniformly enabling form is to overlook how unevenly authors responded to it. Some novelists planned their installments meticulously, sketching the contents of each number before beginning; others wrote only a few days ahead of the printer and were plainly at the mercy of their deadlines. Readers' letters could enrich a narrative, but they could also pressure an author into rescuing a character who had been destined to die. The most useful approach, then, is neither to condemn the serial form nor to celebrate it, but to examine, novel by novel, how a particular writer negotiated its pressures. Such an approach cannot yield a general verdict on serialization, but it has the compensating virtue of restoring to view the choices individual writers actually made.

Show answer & explanation

Answer: A

assess two opposing evaluations of a publishing practice and recommend a different way of studying it: Correct. Paragraph 1 gives the older condemnation, paragraph 2 the revisionist praise, and paragraph 3 ("Yet…") faults both and proposes a novel-by-novel approach.

trace the history of serial publication from its origins to its decline: The passage traces critical opinion about serialization, not the history of the practice; its origins and decline are never discussed.

defend the view that serial publication improved the quality of Victorian fiction: That is the revisionists' position, which the author calls a new "simplification" in the third paragraph rather than defends.

explain why Victorian novelists preferred serial publication to single-volume publication: The passage never says novelists preferred the serial form; it notes that some struggled with its deadlines.

argue that readers' letters were the decisive influence on the plots of serialized novels: Readers' letters are one example in paragraphs 2 and 3; the passage never claims they were decisive.

For primary-purpose questions, map each paragraph's role: here critique (P1), counter-view (P2), and a "Yet" paragraph that qualifies both and offers a third approach. The answer must cover all three.

Quantitative Reasoning

Question 9

In the figure, the right triangle has legs of lengths 9 and 12 and hypotenuse of length 15. What is the length $h$ of the altitude drawn from the right angle to the hypotenuse?

Right triangle with altitude to the hypotenuse

Show answer & explanation

Answer: 7.2

The area using the legs as base and height is $\frac{1}{2} (9) (12) = 54$ .
The same area using the hypotenuse as the base is $\frac{1}{2} (15) h$ .
Set them equal: $\frac{15}{2} h = 54$ , so $h = \frac{108}{15} = 7.2$ .

Compute a triangle's area two ways; for a right triangle the altitude to the hypotenuse is (leg × leg) ÷ hypotenuse.

Question 10

Two fair six-sided dice, each with faces numbered 1 through 6, are rolled once. Which of the following events have a probability greater than $\frac{1}{4}$ ?

Indicate all such events.

Select all that apply.

Show answer & explanation

Answer: B, D

There are $6 \times 6 = 36$ equally likely outcomes; $\frac{1}{4}$ of them is 9 outcomes, so an event needs more than 9 outcomes.
Sum 7: 6 outcomes. Doubles: 6. Sum at most 4: 6.
Product odd: both odd, $3 \times 3 = 9$ outcomes, which equals 9 and is not more.
At least one 6: the complement (no 6) has $5 \times 5 = 25$ outcomes, so $36 - 25 = 11$ .
Sum even: both odd or both even, $9 + 9 = 18$ .
Only "at least one 6" (11) and "sum is even" (18) exceed 9 outcomes.

The sum of the two numbers is 7.: 6 of 36 outcomes, so the probability is $\frac{1}{6}$ .

At least one die shows a 6.: Correct: $36 - 25 = 11$ outcomes, and $\frac{11}{36} \approx 0.31 > 0.25$ .

The product of the two numbers is odd.: Both dice must be odd: $3 \times 3 = 9$ outcomes, exactly $\frac{1}{4}$ , not greater.

The sum of the two numbers is even.: Correct: 18 of 36 outcomes, so the probability is $\frac{1}{2}$ .

Both dice show the same number.: 6 doubles out of 36, so the probability is $\frac{1}{6}$ .

The sum of the two numbers is at most 4.: Sums of 2, 3, 4 occur in $1 + 2 + 3 = 6$ ways, so the probability is $\frac{1}{6}$ .

Convert the threshold to a count of outcomes (here, more than 9 of 36), and use the complement for "at least one".

Question 11

Which of the five departments had the greatest percent increase in enrollment from 2024 to 2025?

Enrollment in Five Departments at a College, 2024 and 2025
Department	2024 enrollment	2025 enrollment
Biology	420	483
Chemistry	250	200
Economics	400	420
Physics	190	209
History	160	192

Each student is counted in exactly one department.

Show answer & explanation

Answer: B

Percent increase $= \frac{2025 - 2024}{2024} \times 100%$ .
Biology: $63/420 = 15%$ . Economics: $20/400 = 5%$ . Physics: $19/190 = 10%$ .
History: $32/160 = 20%$ . Chemistry decreased: $- 50/250 = - 20%$ .
The greatest percent increase is History's 20%.

Biology: Biology had the greatest increase in number of students (63), but $63/420 = 15%$ , which is less than History's 20%.

History: Correct. History rose from 160 to 192, an increase of $32/160 = 20%$ , the greatest percent increase.

Economics: Economics rose by $20/400 = 5%$ , the smallest increase.

Physics: Physics rose by $19/190 = 10%$ .

Chemistry: Chemistry's enrollment fell by 20%; a decrease is not an increase.

Percent change compares the change with the starting value; the largest increase in raw numbers is not necessarily the largest percent increase.

Question 12

A bag contains 4 red marbles and 6 blue marbles. Two marbles are selected at random, one after the other, without replacement. What is the probability that both marbles are the same color?

Show answer & explanation

Answer: E

Both red: $\frac{4}{10} \times \frac{3}{9} = \frac{12}{90}$ .
Both blue: $\frac{6}{10} \times \frac{5}{9} = \frac{30}{90}$ .
The two cases cannot both happen, so add them: $\frac{12}{90} + \frac{30}{90} = \frac{42}{90}$ .
Simplify: $\frac{42}{90} = \frac{7}{15}$ .

$\frac{2}{15}$ : This is the probability that both are red only, $\frac{4}{10} \cdot \frac{3}{9}$ ; the both-blue case must be added.

$\frac{1}{3}$ : This is the probability that both are blue only, $\frac{6}{10} \cdot \frac{5}{9}$ ; the both-red case must be added.

$\frac{2}{5}$ : This is the probability that the first marble is red; it ignores the second draw.

$\frac{13}{25}$ : This draws with replacement, $(0.4)^{2} + (0.6)^{2} = 0.52$ ; without replacement the second draw is from 9 marbles.

$\frac{7}{15}$ : Correct. $P (both red) + P (both blue) = \frac{12}{90} + \frac{30}{90} = \frac{42}{90} = \frac{7}{15}$ .

Without replacement, the second probability uses the reduced counts; add the probabilities of mutually exclusive cases.

Question 13

In the figure, lines $ℓ$ and $m$ are parallel. The two labeled angles lie between $ℓ$ and $m$ , on the same side of the transversal. What is the value of $x$ ?

Two parallel lines cut by a transversal

Note: Figure not drawn to scale.

Show answer & explanation

Answer: C

Both labeled angles lie between $ℓ$ and $m$ on the same side of the transversal, so they are same-side interior angles.
Same-side interior angles formed by parallel lines are supplementary: $(3 x + 10) + (5 x - 30) = 180$ .
Simplify: $8 x - 20 = 180$ , so $8 x = 200$ and $x = 25$ .
Check: the angles measure $85°$ and $95°$ , and $85 + 95 = 180$ .

20: This sets the two angles equal. They are same-side (consecutive) interior angles, which are supplementary, not equal.

22.5: This solves $8 x = 180$ and forgets the constants $+ 10$ and $- 30$ .

25: Correct. The angles are same-side interior angles, so $(3 x + 10) + (5 x - 30) = 180$ , giving $8 x = 200$ and $x = 25$ .

85: This is the measure of the angle $(3 x + 10) °$ , not the value of $x$ .

95: This is the measure of the angle $(5 x - 30) °$ , not the value of $x$ .

With parallel lines, alternate interior angles are equal but same-side interior angles add to $180°$ ; identify which pair you have before writing the equation.

Question 14

The graph shows the number of units sold by a store in each quarter of a year.

Quantity A: The percent increase in units sold from Q1 to Q2

Quantity B: The percent increase in units sold from Q3 to Q4

Show answer & explanation

Answer: A

Read the graph: Q1 = 40, Q2 = 50, Q3 = 60, Q4 = 70.
Q1 to Q2: increase of 10 on a base of 40, so $\frac{10}{40} = 25%$ .
Q3 to Q4: increase of 10 on a base of 60, so $\frac{10}{60} \approx 16.7%$ .
Since $25% > 16.7%$ , Quantity A is greater.

Quantity A is greater.: Correct. The same 10-unit increase is a larger percent of the smaller starting value 40.

Quantity B is greater.: This divides by the larger base or the later value; percent increase uses the starting value of each period.

The two quantities are equal.: Both increases are 10 units, but percent change divides by different starting values, 40 and 60.

The relationship cannot be determined from the information given.: The graph is drawn to scale and gives all four values, so both percents are determined.

Percent change = change ÷ original value; equal absolute changes give a larger percent on a smaller base.

Question 15

A rectangle has a perimeter of 20.

Quantity A: The area of the rectangle

Quantity B: $25$

Show answer & explanation

Answer: D

Length + width $= 10$ .
Case 1: a $5 \times 5$ rectangle (a square is a rectangle) has area 25, so the quantities are equal.
Case 2: a $4 \times 6$ rectangle has area 24, so Quantity B is greater.
Since the relationship can be "equal" or "B greater," it cannot be determined: the answer is D.

Quantity A is greater.: The largest possible area with perimeter 20 is 25 (the square), so the area can never exceed 25.

Quantity B is greater.: This is true for every non-square rectangle, but the $5 \times 5$ square also has perimeter 20 and its area equals 25.

The two quantities are equal.: Equality holds only for the $5 \times 5$ case; a $4 \times 6$ rectangle has area 24.

The relationship cannot be determined from the information given.: Correct. The area can equal 25 ( $5 \times 5$ ) or be less ( $4 \times 6$ gives 24).

A square is a rectangle; when one case gives "equal" and another gives "less," the answer is D.

Question 16

$x^{2} = 5 x$

Quantity A: $x$

Quantity B: $4$

Show answer & explanation

Answer: D

Rewrite: $x^{2} - 5 x = 0$ , so $x (x - 5) = 0$ .
The solutions are $x = 0$ and $x = 5$ .
Case 1: $x = 5$ . Then $5 > 4$ , so Quantity A is greater.
Case 2: $x = 0$ . Then $0 < 4$ , so Quantity B is greater.
The relationship depends on which solution holds, so the answer is D.

Quantity A is greater.: This uses only $x = 5$ , the result of dividing both sides by $x$ ; that division discards the solution $x = 0$ .

Quantity B is greater.: This holds for $x = 0$ , but $x = 5$ also satisfies the equation and is greater than 4.

The two quantities are equal.: Neither solution equals 4, so the quantities are never equal.

The relationship cannot be determined from the information given.: Correct. $x = 5$ makes A greater, while $x = 0$ makes B greater.

Never divide both sides by a variable that could be 0; factor instead and keep every root.

Test yourself under exam conditions

Take the free GRE test and get a score report by domain.

Start free GRE test

The full GRE question bank is coming. Get an email when it launches.