Changes originally planned for the Graduate Records Exam (GRE) that would have reduced the availability of the exam have been scrapped.
Education Testing Service (ETS) announced Monday that the release of the revised exam, which was scheduled to take effect July 31, has been canceled. Instead of being offered just 35 times a year as the revision dictated, the exam will continue to be given at testing centers worldwide in its current form.
"The cancellation is good news for students," Russell Schaffer, Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions senior communications manager, said. "The new GRE was probably going to be more expensive and more challenging. It's just easier for them."
The sudden cancellation came after three months of studying the possible effects of the new GRE on test takers and test-taking locations. ETS foZund that there wasn't going to be enough spaces to ensure that every student could take the exam, said Tom Ewing, spokesman for Educational Testing Service.
"There are over a half-million people who want to take this exam every year," Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions Vice President of Graduate Programs Ben Baron said. "The newer GRE was less convenient to take. The lack of convenience and accessibility outweighed the benefits of the other changes."
Ultimately, the cancellation will greatly benefit international students since registration for the new GRE was stopped entirely in India, Japan and China, Mark Wardell, associate dean of Graduate Student Affairs, said. "The [Penn State] graduate school does not require the GRE," Wardell said. "That decision is made at the program level. As for us, we're back to business as usual with students applying to grad school."
The new GRE would also have used campus computer labs, designating a specific lab as a "testing center" on a set date, by issuing the exam over the Web.
"We had 3,000 Internet centers for the exam with 1,800 coming online, but even with those numbers we couldn't guarantee the space," Ewing said.
Modifications to the exam included increased test time from two-and-a-half hours to four hours, as Zwell as major changes to the types of questions asked.
"I've never thought highly of standardized tests to begin with, but I thought the changes to the exam in regard to the language section were good," said Nicole Belolan (graduate-American culture), who took the GRE in July 2006 and will be attending the University of Delaware this summer. "I thought the writing section was useful because that shows what a student learned in college. I am in humanities, so the math section really didn't affect me."
ETS was also planning on doing away with analogies and antonyms and adding critical thinking questions that were more reflective on the abilities graduate schools were saying they wanted their students to have, Ewing said.
"We wanted them to get away from those more interpretive questions," Wardell said. "It's also being able to read and make sense of what you're reading."
Security issues also prompted the test developers to revise the GRE after Internet postings containing test questions and answers were discovered in chat rooms in Asia, Baron said.
Ewing said these were isolated incidents in that region of the world, and ETS security personnel are working to fix it.
Although the revised GRE has been pulled and no alterations are being planned between 2007 and 2008, Ewing said future changes would still be made over time but not all at once.
While students preparing for the GRE can take a breath of relief, Baron said they should continue with their plans. "The earlier they take the test, the easier it will be with graduate admissions to the school of their choice," he said.
