I took the new, shortened GRE. Here are a few takeaways:
1) The shortened format is a total game changer. Like many people who take it, I always found the last 2 hours to be night and day different from the first 2 hours. The first 2 hours were basically fun, but I always hit a wall after that and the last half of the exam took pure tenacity. With the shortened format, you don’t hit that blood sugar wall where you suddenly lose the ability to focus. I always have a lot of adrenaline going into the exam, and with the shortened format that adrenaline carried me throughout the entirety of the exam without evaporating like it usually does.
2) It is such a relief that there is only one 30-minute essay. I would love for there to be no writing section at all, but at least now you don’t have to spend a full hour writing essays and draining your adrenaline before you actually start into the quant and verbal.
3) I had 2 quant sections and 2 verbal sections as follows:
Quant- 12 questions (21 minutes)
Verbal- 12 questions (18 minutes)
Quant- 15 questions (26 minutes)
Verbal- 15 questions (23 minutes)