Graduate School prepared for planned GRE changes in August

Changes to the GRE, the standardized test taken by applicants to many graduate and business schools, will go into effect in August. The changes, intended to better predict test-takers’ future performance, have implications for the way the test is conducted and scored as well as for the types of questions asked.

The most obvious difference between the old and new GRE will be the test’s grading scale. The verbal and quantitative reasoning sections of the revised GRE will now be graded on a scale of 130 to 170 in one-point increments, rather than on a scale of 200 to 800 in 10-point increments, as before. David Redman, the Graduate School’s associate dean for academic affairs, said the Graduate School was prepared to deal with this change.

“The biggest change we will see is the new scoring scale,” he said in an e-mail. “This may be initially confusing, but we are assured that [Educational Testing Service] will provide ‘translation’ or ‘equivalence’ tables between the old scale and the new.”

The GRE, produced by ETS, consists of sections intended to measure analytical writing, verbal reasoning and quantitative reasoning skills. In the United States, the GRE is administered by computer, which allows the difficulty of questions to be weighted by the test-taker’s previous performance, though the test is sometimes administered on paper in foreign countries.

According to the ETS website, the revised test will allow test-takers to answer questions within a section in any order, which was not previously possible.

The content of the verbal and quantitative reasoning sections is also being overhauled.

In the verbal section, analogy and antonym questions will be replaced with questions intended to test reading comprehension, while the quantitative section will allow test-takers to use an on-screen calculator but will test the ability to interpret real-world data more closely.

Buddy Gardineer ’11, who took the test earlier this year, said he thought the test he took was acceptable but imperfect.

“Aside from seeing three or four words on the verbal section that I had never seen before in my life (and I imagine I probably will never see again), I think the GRE that I took in September was pretty fair,” he said in an e-mail, adding that he felt some changes to the test were necessary.

“In my opinion, the quantitative section should be much harder than it is,” he said. “I think something like 8 percent of test takers get perfect scores. It’s ridiculous.”

Redman said the Graduate School would not modify its process for admitting students as a result of changes to the GRE.

“We don’t anticipate that the students submitting the new scores will look, or be looked at, radically differently,” Redman said, given the evaluation process’s focus on other elements of applications.

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At the University, applicants’ GRE scores receive less consideration than other factors, such as prior research experience and written work, letters of recommendation and “prior academic preparation,” Redman said, adding that the precise emphasis placed on GRE scores varies from department to department within the Graduate School.

“In some [departments], only the verbal or the quantitative score is looked at,” he said. “For yet others, the GRE scores receive very little consideration.”

Gardineer, who gained admission to plasma physics programs at Stanford and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said he felt the GRE, while not the most important element of an application, deserved to be taken seriously.

“In the grand scheme of things, I can’t imagine that the GRE is all-important, especially in comparison to coursework and research,” he said. “That being said, if you want to get into a good physics or engineering program, you probably don’t want to get much lower than a 750 on the quantitative section. So while the GRE may not be the most important thing, it does hold some weight.”