👋 Hello, my friends at GRE Prep Club!

Questions on the GRE are different from questions on many other tests in that GRE questions typically include trap choices.

For instance, on an ordinary math test, to answer the questions, you choose among choices presented in straightforward ways. The choices are simply incorrect or correct. However, to find correct answers to GRE Quant questions, you have to avoid falling into traps set by the question-writers. In other words, you have to avoid choices designed to appear correct even though they aren’t. The same goes for GRE Verbal questions. So, another reason why GRE students miss questions is that they’re falling into traps.

For instance, in a Quantitative Comparison question, a diagram may be designed to seem to provide information it doesn’t actually provide. In a Sentence Equivalence question, some of the answer choices may fit the overall idea presented by the sentence but not make sense in the blank. In such cases, it’s easy for a test-taker to miss a question by selecting an incorrect choice because it seems or “feels” correct.

So, if it’s often the case that you feel good about your answers to GRE questions only to find that you got the questions incorrect, there is a good chance you’re falling for trap choices.

The key to not falling for trap choices is to simply understand what you’re up against. In other words, understanding that there are trap choices in GRE questions and knowing the types of traps will help you avoid them.

GRE Quant Problem-Solving and Data Interpretation questions include trap choices that match what you’ll get by making common errors in calculation or data analysis. In Quantitative Comparison, the given information, rather than the choices, involves logical traps. For instance, the given information may be designed to seem to provide insights that it doesn’t provide. Alternatively, the quantities may be chosen specifically because they seem to be related in a way different from how they’re actually related.

In GRE Verbal, there are a variety of trap choices. Some play on our cognitive biases by somehow fitting a scenario without being correct. Others are partially correct or mix things up, so that if we’re not careful, we may think they’re correct. Others seem to be supported by provided information but don’t actually follow from that information. The many types of Verbal trap choices are discussed in detail in the Target Test Prep GRE course.

Once we’re aware of the types of GRE trap choices, we need to learn how to avoid them. The main way to do so is to be careful about the logic of what we’re doing. In both Quant and Verbal, we have to pay close attention to details and be careful not to make unsupported logical leaps.
Warmest regards,

Scott Woodbury-Stewart
Founder & CEO, Target Test Prep