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Given a 30-minute, 20-question GRE verbal section, what is a reasonable time budget for a single Sentence Equivalence item?

AAround 2 minutes 30 seconds, since two words must be selected
BAround 4 minutes, matching the RC long-passage budget
CAround 60 to 75 seconds, banking saved time for longer RC items
DAround 30 seconds, since most pairs are obvious synonyms
Answer & Solution
Correct answer: C. Around 60 to 75 seconds, banking saved time for longer RC items
The 30/20 average is 90 seconds per question. SE items are typically faster than RC because they involve one sentence and short choices. Spending 60-75 seconds per SE banks roughly 15-30 seconds per item for the longer passage-based questions.
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