GRE to see sizable changes soon
By Sid Reddy
Jan. 7, 2010 10:13 p.m.
The Graduate Record Examination will undergo its largest overhaul to date in fall 2011.
The GRE, supervised by Educational Testing Service, is a computer-based standardized test necessary for application to most graduate programs and is accepted by many business schools as well.
The test consists of an analytical writing section, a verbal reasoning section, a quantitative reasoning section and two unscored sections.
“(The new exam) is better by design because the test will now measure those abilities (and) skills that are truly critical in graduate programs and business programs,” said James Wimbush, graduate school dean of Indiana University.
Under the new format, the test has been extended from three hours to three and a half hours, said Mark McNutt, manager of external relations for the Educational Testing Service.
All three sections of the GRE are being modified, with the verbal reasoning section seeing the largest changes, said David Payne, vice president of College and Graduate Programs at Educational Testing Service.
In the verbal reasoning section, antonyms and analogies will no longer be a part of the exam, and the section will focus more on passage-based critical reasoning, said Andrew Szeri, dean of the graduate division at UC Berkeley.
In the quantitative reasoning section, an online calculator will be added to reduce student stress over making small calculation errors, said Liora Schmelkin, dean of graduate studies at Hofstra University.
In the analytical writing section, “the essays (will be) in response to very specific questions so that when we evaluate (them), we know that they’re ones that were written in the testing center and weren’t ones where (students) memorized material prior to taking the test,” Payne said.
The GRE’s scoring scale has also changed.
“The old scale going from 200 to 800 implied that changes between 600 and 610 might be meaningful when in fact it was only one data point,” Schmelkin said. “The new scale has 40 points from 130 to 170. So a candidate that has 150, and (another that has) 152 are probably very similar.”
Another change will be the separation of the test into sections.
In the current GRE, test takers must answer questions in the order the computer provides them.
Students are not allowed to go back to the question once they have answered it.
The test is also computer adaptive, so if a student answers a question incorrectly, the following question is of a lesser difficulty.
Under the new format, students will be allowed to review questions within the entire section and go back and change answers Szeri said.
The changes have received some positive reviews.
“Letting students go back to other questions in the section will definitely relieve test anxiety,” said Netta Avineri, Graduate Students Association vice president of academic affairs and a doctoral student in applied linguistics.
While the changes to the GRE are important, the exam is not the most significant factor for admission, said Ross Shideler, associate dean of the graduate division at UCLA.
“Here at UCLA, we encourage all the departments to have a holistic approach so that student grades, faculty recommendations, etc. are all significant admissions factors,” he said.
Shideler added, “(Educational Testing Service) is trying to respond to a national need to open up the GRE to eliminate or at least reduce advantages to those who could afford to train for the exam.”
“Anything that can be done to the exam that can make it closer to the skills you need in graduate school, the better,” Avineri said.
