<p>How common is it for people to actually <em>disagree</em> over what the correct answer in a GRE reading passage is?</p>
<p>And do you get this impression more on the review prep books than on the official exams? I’ve seen some badly written science answers on the Barron’s science reading comprehension passage.</p>
<p>I’m not really sure what you’re asking. When the ETS releases the test questions for real tests, they have already selected upon a correct (or “best”) answer for the particular question. It’s not like they are going to take your question and argue over it; the computer scores the test. On the GRE, you must select the BEST answer, which means that more than one answer may be correct.</p>
<p>It’s very common. If you’ve ever been to urch.com or other places like that, there’s a ton of people asking for explanations to answers in practice books, most likely to the same questions you have. </p>
<p>Prep review books are notorious for errors. All you have to do is take a look at Amazon.com to see that. However, many test prep materials, like Princeton Review Online and PowerPrep, are also very accurate in terms of your score on the actual test.</p>
<p>So try those, then if you’re not happy, come back and ask us again.</p>
<p>It helps when you study (and when to have the answer key) to figure out why the correct answer is what it is. If you focus on why your answer might be correct, you’ll run into trouble on the actual test.</p>
<p>Well - I do wonder if people feel like they might disagree more with the answers of reading comprehension prep books, as compared to the answers of reading comprehension questions on the real test. The questions/answers on prep books usually aren’t as intensively vetted as the questions/answers on a real test are. So this means that there could be <em>multiple</em> correct answers, or on the other hand - all of the answers suck, but some might suck less than the others. After all, one can often have multiple interpretations out of the same passage.</p>
<p>You’re doing it wrong. You need to shift your mentality away from this “multiple correct answer mindset.” You are not looking for the “correct” answer, you are looking for the BEST answer. The questions and answers are designed to have multiple correct answers in essence to trick you, I think you are really hurting yourself by thinking of the questions in this way.</p>