The test will become linear, longer and more interpretative, partly in an effort to decrease cheating
The Graduate Record Examination, an entrance exam taken by thousands of prospective graduate students nationwide, will undergo its first major change in its 55-year history next October.
Educational Testing Services, which oversees the GRE, has been working with admissions deans for the past four years preparing for the change.
The change, which ETS announced in mid-October, is occurring shortly after changes were made to two other widely used standardized tests: the Medical College Admissions Test and the Test of English as a Foreign Language.
Every part of the GRE will be altered. For example, the test will be lengthened from 2 1/2 hours to four hours. Scoring will change from a 200-800 point scale to a 120-179 point scale.
The new GRE is supposed to put more emphasis on skills that students will use in graduate school. Students will be tested less on vocabulary and geometry and more on reasoning skills, complex word problems and interpretation. Analogies and antonyms will be eliminated.
Tom Ewing, director of press relations for Educational Testing Services, said the primary reason for switching from the computer adaptive test to a linear one is to reduce cheating and memorization by test takers.
In the computer adaptive test, questions are dependent on the student’s response to the previous question.
In a linear test, a format used before the computer adaptive test was implemented, each student is scored on the same set of questions. Questions will not be reused, thus making it harder for students to share exam questions with future test takers.
“No student should get an unfair advantage over other students by cheating,” Ewing said. “We want everyone to test honestly so that the test accurately reflects their ability and knowledge.”
In the new test, students taking the test on a particular day will all begin the test at the same time, Ewing said. The test will be administered only 30 times a year, as opposed to most days of the year as is the case now. The number of test locations will increase to 3,000 to accommodate more test-takers at a time.
In 2002, two students in China were accused of memorizing GRE test questions and posting them on the Internet for future test takers. In the same year, two students at Columbia University were accused of transmitting answers with walkie-talkies during the test.
The new GRE is aimed at providing graduate programs with a better indicator of a student’s performance in graduate school, said Pamela Benoit, interim graduate dean at MU.
“The new test will measure the constructs that are more important to success in graduate school,” Benoit said.
Benoit said the MU graduate program is beginning to talk to directors of graduate studies on what to expect and how to prepare for the new changes.
Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions, which provides test preparation services for students taking standardized tests, is also preparing for the GRE change. Ben Baron, vice president of graduate programs at Kaplan, is advising students who plan to go to graduate school in the near future to take the test before it changes. Scores are good for five years.
He also said students should set up test dates and times about two months in advance before testing space for the old test runs out.
To help students adjust to the upcoming GRE changes, Kaplan is also hosting free events at universities around the country, including MU in February.