Should I Take the GRE or MAT? Complete Comparison Guide for Graduate Applicants

If you are applying to graduate school and asking yourself "should I take the GRE or MAT," you are already thinking strategically — and that instinct will serve you well throughout the admissions process. Both exams serve as standardized assessments for graduate program admissions, but they measure different skills, carry different price tags, and are accepted by vastly different pools of programs. Understanding the distinction between these two tests before you register can save you hundreds of dollars and dozens of study hours.

The Graduate Record Examination, commonly known as the GRE, is administered by ETS and tests verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, and analytical writing. It is accepted by thousands of graduate and professional programs across nearly every academic discipline in the United States and internationally. The Miller Analogies Test, or MAT, is a Pearson-owned exam that tests only one cognitive skill — analogical reasoning — across 120 questions delivered in 60 minutes. It is narrower in scope but beloved by programs in the humanities, psychology, education, and the social sciences.

The decision between these two exams often comes down to three factors: which programs you are targeting, where your academic strengths lie, and how much time you realistically have to prepare. If you are applying to a business school, engineering program, or anything STEM-heavy, the GRE is almost certainly your only viable option. If you are applying to a master's program in counseling, library science, or educational psychology, the MAT may not only be accepted — it may actually be preferred by your target programs.

Cost is another major consideration that applicants frequently overlook. The GRE general test costs $220 in the United States, while the MAT costs approximately $85 at most testing centers. If budget is a constraint or you simply want to minimize financial risk while you explore your options, the MAT offers a significantly lower barrier to entry. Some applicants choose to take the MAT first as a lower-stakes way to demonstrate academic ability while they continue preparing for the GRE.

Preparation timelines differ substantially as well. Because the GRE tests quantitative reasoning in depth — covering arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and data analysis — students who have been out of math coursework for several years often need 8 to 12 weeks of structured preparation. The MAT, which requires no math at all, can often be prepared for in 3 to 6 weeks, primarily through vocabulary study and exposure to analogical reasoning patterns across art, literature, history, science, and mathematics concepts at a definitional rather than computational level.

For a thorough breakdown of the gre vs mat decision and everything that goes into MAT preparation specifically, this site provides detailed guidance tailored to each phase of your study. Whether you are just beginning to research your options or are already registered for one of these exams, having a clear picture of what each test demands is the foundation of a successful preparation strategy.

This article will walk you through every meaningful dimension of the GRE versus MAT comparison: format differences, score ranges, program acceptance, preparation requirements, costs, and the specific academic profiles that tend to favor one exam over the other. By the end, you will have a clear, evidence-based answer to the question of which test is right for your graduate school goals.

Understanding which graduate programs accept the MAT versus the GRE is arguably the single most important factor in making your decision. The MAT is accepted at over 1,200 graduate programs in the United States, but that acceptance is heavily concentrated in specific disciplines. Programs in education, psychology, counseling, social work, library and information science, and the humanities are the most likely to list the MAT as an acceptable alternative to the GRE. Some of these programs actually prefer the MAT because it aligns more naturally with the verbal and conceptual reasoning skills their fields demand.

Business schools almost universally require the GMAT or GRE and will not accept the MAT as a substitute. Similarly, programs in engineering, computer science, the physical sciences, and most medical or law-adjacent fields will require the GRE or their own discipline-specific exam. If you are applying to any STEM-oriented master's or doctoral program, spending time on MAT preparation would be a strategic error — confirm your target programs' requirements before you commit to either exam.

One often-overlooked nuance is that many programs list both the GRE and MAT as acceptable but internally have preferences that are not publicly stated. Contacting the admissions office directly and asking whether one exam is more commonly submitted by competitive applicants can give you intelligence that most applicants never seek. Admissions coordinators are generally forthcoming with this information and may tell you that 90% of applicants submit GRE scores, which would signal the implicit institutional preference even when both are technically accepted.

Doctoral programs, even in humanities fields, are more likely to require the GRE than master's programs in the same discipline. If you are planning to pursue a Ph.D. in English, history, or psychology, you should verify carefully whether the MAT is sufficient for doctoral admission or whether programs expect GRE scores for that level of study. Master's programs in those same fields are far more likely to accept the MAT without any reservations.

For applicants targeting multiple programs across different disciplines — a common scenario for students keeping their options open — the GRE's broader acceptance makes it the safer default choice. Taking the GRE does not prevent you from also taking the MAT, and some applicants submit both sets of scores to programs that accept either, strategically presenting the score that casts them in the stronger light.

Score validity is another practical consideration. GRE scores are valid for five years from the date of the test. MAT scores are also valid for five years. If you took either exam during an earlier graduate school application cycle and are now returning to the process, verify whether your scores are still within the validity window before assuming you can reuse them — programs will not accept expired scores regardless of how competitive they were.

The competitive landscape matters too. Because the GRE is taken by a much larger pool of applicants across a much wider range of programs, programs that accept both exams often have less reliable data about what constitutes a competitive MAT score relative to their typical GRE applicant pool. This can work in your favor if you are a strong analogical reasoner — admissions committees may be less calibrated about what a 430 MAT score represents relative to peer programs than they are about GRE scores in the 75th percentile range.

One of the most useful frameworks for deciding between the GRE and MAT is to think about where your natural cognitive strengths align with each exam's demands. The MAT is a pure test of analogical reasoning — your ability to identify the precise conceptual relationship between two terms and apply it to find a missing fourth term.

This sounds narrow, but executing it well at the speed required by the 60-minute time limit demands both broad academic knowledge and rapid logical pattern recognition. If you excelled in humanities coursework, read widely, and are comfortable navigating unfamiliar vocabulary and interdisciplinary concepts, the MAT may play directly to your strengths.

The GRE, by contrast, rewards a different profile. The Verbal section tests vocabulary in context, reading comprehension across complex academic passages, and the ability to complete sentences with precision. The Quantitative section tests applied mathematical reasoning through word problems, data interpretation, and conceptual geometry. The Analytical Writing section rewards the ability to construct and evaluate logical arguments in prose form. If you are a well-rounded academic who is equally comfortable with quantitative and verbal tasks, the GRE gives you more opportunities to demonstrate your full range of abilities.

Some applicants mistakenly believe that performing well on the MAT requires deep expertise in every field covered by its content categories. In practice, MAT preparation focuses on the types of relationships — semantic, associative, classification-based, part-to-whole — that the test uses, and exposure to vocabulary and concepts across the major content domains. You do not need to be an art historian to succeed on fine arts analogies; you need to recognize the relationship structure and apply it accurately. This is why vocabulary-building is such a central component of MAT preparation strategy.

Timing strategy also differs between the two exams. The GRE is a multi-stage adaptive test, meaning that your performance on the first verbal or quantitative section determines the difficulty level of the second section you receive. Understanding this adaptive mechanism is important for GRE strategy because skipping too many questions or rushing early sections can put you on a lower-difficulty track that caps your maximum achievable score.

The MAT, by contrast, is not adaptive — all 120 questions are presented in fixed sequence, and pacing strategy centers on maintaining 30 seconds per question on average while not spending too long on any single difficult item.

Score reporting strategy is another dimension where the two exams differ meaningfully. ETS's ScoreSelect option allows GRE test-takers to choose which test date's scores they send to programs — you can take the exam multiple times and only report your best performance. Pearson does not offer an equivalent selective reporting option for the MAT; scores from recent test administrations are reported according to the program's score reporting window policies. Understanding these policies before you test can affect how many times you plan to sit for either exam.

Retake policies also differ. The GRE can be taken once every 21 days and up to five times per year. The MAT can be retaken, but Pearson recommends waiting at least three months between attempts and advises that programs may see multiple score submissions. Check your target programs' policies on score visibility for multiple attempts — some programs average all submitted scores, others take the highest, and a small number penalize applicants for an unusually large number of attempts.

Ultimately, the best exam is the one that your target programs accept and that gives your individual academic profile the most favorable presentation. Neither exam is inherently superior — they are tools, and like any tool, their value depends entirely on whether they are the right fit for the job at hand. Investing the time to research your programs and honestly assess your own strengths is the most valuable preparation step you can take before you ever open a practice book or log onto a testing site.

Preparing for the MAT requires a fundamentally different approach than preparing for the GRE, and understanding that difference from the outset will prevent you from wasting study time on irrelevant material. The core preparation task for the MAT is building a broad base of vocabulary and conceptual knowledge across six content categories: language and literature, fine arts, history and social science, natural science, mathematics, and general knowledge. You do not need deep expertise in any category — you need enough familiarity to recognize relationships between terms and apply those relationships accurately under timed pressure.

Vocabulary study is the cornerstone of MAT preparation. Unlike the GRE, where vocabulary appears in sentence-completion and reading comprehension contexts, the MAT tests vocabulary through analogical relationships — knowing not just what a word means, but how it relates to other words in precisely defined ways. Flashcard-based vocabulary study works well for the MAT, particularly when cards are organized by content domain rather than alphabetically. Aiming to learn 20 to 30 new terms per day across the six content categories is a realistic and productive daily target during a 4-week preparation window.

Practice tests are essential for both exams, but they serve a slightly different diagnostic function for each. For the GRE, practice tests reveal weaknesses in specific content areas — identifying that you are scoring below the 50th percentile on geometry, for instance, directs you to spend more time on that subdomain. For the MAT, practice tests reveal which relationship types and content categories produce the most errors. If you consistently miss analogies from the fine arts category, that signals a vocabulary gap that more targeted study can close before test day.

Time management during MAT practice is worth emphasizing specifically. Sixty minutes for 120 questions means an average of 30 seconds per question — a pace that feels uncomfortably fast until you have practiced enough to recognize common relationship types at a glance. Training yourself to categorize each analogy's relationship type in the first five seconds of reading it is a skill that develops through repetition. Students who practice with untimed sets first and then transition to timed practice sessions typically develop this fluency more naturally than those who try to time themselves from the very first practice session.

For GRE preparation, the quantitative section deserves special attention from applicants who have been away from formal math instruction for several years. ETS provides official GRE preparation materials that clearly outline the math concepts tested, and reviewing these systematically — rather than working through a general algebra textbook — is the most efficient preparation approach. Focus on the conceptual understanding of arithmetic, algebra, and data interpretation rather than procedural computation, since many GRE math questions test whether you understand what an equation or graph represents rather than whether you can execute a lengthy calculation.

Analytical writing preparation for the GRE is often underemphasized but matters for programs that weight writing scores heavily, including many humanities and social science doctoral programs. Practicing both the Issue task (taking and defending a position on a general interest topic) and the Argument task (critiquing the logical structure of a given argument) under timed conditions is essential. ETS publishes the complete pool of Issue and Argument prompts from which test questions are drawn, making it possible to practice with the actual prompts you might encounter — a preparation advantage that few test-takers fully exploit.

For a comprehensive, structured approach to the MAT specifically, reviewing a dedicated gre vs mat comparison resource that covers content categories, scoring mechanics, and preparation timelines in depth will give you the tactical detail needed to build a truly effective study plan rather than a generic one. The difference between a 410 and a 450 MAT score often comes down not to raw intelligence but to the systematic, organized preparation that most test-takers skip in favor of passive review.

On test day itself, whether you are sitting for the GRE or the MAT, the most important mental skill is managing uncertainty without losing momentum. Both exams contain questions that will genuinely stump you — items where you have narrowed the answer to two plausible choices and cannot immediately see the deciding factor.

Developing a reliable process for handling these moments during practice will prevent them from derailing your performance under actual test conditions. For the MAT, this process typically involves identifying which of the four positions in the analogy holds the missing term, confirming the relationship direction, and then applying process of elimination to the answer choices rather than trying to construct the relationship from scratch.

Physical preparation for test day is often dismissed as obvious but genuinely affects performance. Both the GRE and MAT are cognitively demanding under time pressure, and arriving at the testing center fatigued, dehydrated, or underfed creates a performance handicap that no amount of subject-matter knowledge can fully overcome. Establishing consistent sleep and nutrition habits in the two weeks before your exam date is a legitimate performance optimization, not just conventional wellness advice. This is especially true for the GRE's nearly four-hour duration, which places significant demands on sustained attention and cognitive endurance.

Scratch paper management matters more than most test-takers anticipate for the GRE. The testing center provides scratch paper, and using it actively — writing out answer choices as you eliminate them, sketching quick diagrams for geometry problems, jotting relationship labels for verbal questions — keeps your working memory clear for the actual reasoning work. Applicants who try to do all of their reasoning mentally for the sake of speed often make more avoidable errors than those who invest a few extra seconds in organized note-taking that keeps their analytical process visible and correctable.

For MAT test-takers, the analog between dedicated preparation and test-day performance is more direct than for the GRE. Because the MAT tests a narrower skill set, the gap between prepared and underprepared test-takers is largely a function of vocabulary breadth and pattern-recognition speed — both of which improve predictably and measurably with targeted practice. Students who complete three or more full-length timed MAT practice tests before their actual exam date typically report significantly lower test-day anxiety because they have already experienced the pacing demands and know what their performance baseline looks like.

Score reporting decisions after the exam are also worth planning in advance. For GRE test-takers using ScoreSelect, decide before you test whether you plan to report only your most recent score or your best score across attempts — having this decision made in advance prevents second-guessing after receiving your results. For MAT test-takers, most programs request that score reports be sent directly from Pearson, so confirm the process for requesting official score reports during your registration and verify that the reports will arrive within each program's admissions deadline window.

If you complete your exam and are not satisfied with your score, both tests allow retakes, but the timing implications are important to consider relative to application deadlines. GRE scores are available approximately 10 to 15 days after the test date for Verbal and Quantitative scores (Analytical Writing scores take longer). MAT scores are typically available within a few weeks as well.

If you are applying to programs with early November or December deadlines, you need to account for this score processing time when scheduling a retake — registering for a retake too close to an application deadline is a common logistical error that forces applicants to submit applications without their strongest scores.

The bottom line for prospective graduate students is straightforward: research your programs first, assess your strengths honestly, and then commit fully to whichever exam gives your specific academic profile the best platform. Both the GRE and the MAT are legitimate, rigorous assessments — the strategic choice between them is not about which is easier but about which one opens the most doors for your goals while playing to the cognitive and academic strengths you have genuinely developed over your academic career.