To get ready for the Graduate Record Examination (GRE), Anne Marie Toccket purchased a preparation book, attended training classes and drudged through online tutorials.

"It's all helpful to get a feel for the time limits and test questions," Toccket (senior-Spanish and public relations) said.

But Toccket's preparations will be most potent if she takes the test within the next year, as the exam is scheduled for massive overhauls -- the most considerable change in the test's 55-year history -- beginning Oct. 1, 2006.

The GREs are general knowledge exams required by many graduate schools as part of the admission process.

Victoria Grantham, senior communications manager for Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions, said the most dramatic modifications include a vast hike in test length and the adoption of more critical thinking questions.

"The content changing is pretty dramatic; the overall object is to move from a heavy reliance on memorization to a more complex reasoning they would encounter in grad school," Grantham said.

Ben Baron, vice president of graduate programs for Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions, said the verbal component would get rid of antonyms and analogies and add sentence equivalencies. The math section will have fewer geometry questions and more data interpretations.

"We are trying to create the exam as strong a predictor as possible of graduate school performance," Baron said.

Brian Borawski, president of the Graduate Student Association, said the new emphasis will provide a handicap for students of less analytical majors.

"The shift will try to balance the test more so people in literature and liberal arts have a better chance of doing well," explained said. "Everyone competing will have the same advantages."

The length of the test will double from two-and-a-half hours to at least four hours, Grantham said.

"It is hard to say if [the GREs] would be more difficult," Baron added. "But it becomes a more rigorous exam."

Brooke DiLeone (graduate-psychology) said the expanded test would tax the endurance of students.

"Two hours weren't fun. I can't imagine what four would be like," she said.

The test will also deviate from an adaptive model in favor of a linear design, Baron said.

The current adaptive test customizes questions to the individual test-taker based on answers entered, while the linear form will offer the same test to all students.

DiLeone said she believes the current adaptive design increases stress in test-takers.

"If I got an easy question [on the exam], I thought I had screwed up," she said. "It had just added to my anxiety."

Other alterations to the exam in-clude a different scoring scale and a decrease in test administrations, Baron said.

Mark Wardell, interim assistant dean of Penn State's graduate school, said the impact of the revised GREs on graduate programs and admission numbers are unknown at this point.

He added that the GREs are not a prerequisite of Penn State's graduate school, but individual programs can choose whether they want to require them.

"Historically, the GREs are only able to accurately predict the first year of graduate school," Wardell said. "They do not predict success in a job or even success in the remainder of graduate school."