Single Passages: 650 and 750 Standard Words

The reading section mixes passage lengths on purpose. A single passage is either 650 or 750 standard words, each carrying its own set of nine questions. The length tells you roughly how much text you have to move through, nothing more. Complexity is a separate rating entirely: a passage gets judged on things like sentence structure, vocabulary, and how abstract the ideas are, independent of its word count. That means a 650-word passage can be rated harder to read than a 750-word one sitting right next to it on the same form.

Do the arithmetic and the length difference shrinks fast. At a steady reading rate, 100 extra words costs you only seconds, not minutes, because reading speed in words per minute converts directly: divide the word gap by your rate and multiply by 60 to get seconds. Nine questions take the same mental work whether the passage underneath them ran 650 or 750 words. So the real cost of a passage is mostly in the questions and in how dense the prose is, not in the word count sitting at the top.

This matters for how you plan the whole section. If two 750-word passages land back to back, your pacing doesn't change passage to passage just because the lengths match — what changes your pace is complexity, vocabulary load, and question difficulty. Treat every passage's time budget as roughly equal going in, then adjust on the fly once you see how dense the text actually reads.