Students hoping to attend graduate school will be required to take a longer, more reading-based Graduate Record Examination beginning in August 2011, according to the Educational Testing Service, which administers the GRE.
The ETS, which tests hundreds of thousands of prospective graduate students each year, announced several changes to the test, including an increase in the test's length from 2.5 hours to four hours, an added on-screen calculator for the online version of the test and the elimination of analogies and antonyms questions in favor of more critical reading questions and multiple correct-response questions, in which students must choose every correct option in order to receive credit, according to the ETS website.
While the current test adjusts its difficulty according to test-taker performance with each correct or incorrect response, the new test will enable takers to skip and edit their answers to questions within a given section, according to the ETS website. The test will remain adaptive in difficulty on the basis of a section, rather than a question.
Dean of Graduate Studies Brian Pogue said the changes were likely enacted to make it harder to study for the GRE. He applauded what he perceives as a new focus on students' critical abilities.
"This new updated exam will be an even better measure of a student's ability to interpret and reason through, especially in the verbal part of the exam," Pogue said in an email to The Dartmouth. "These sound like positive changes, in that they make the exam more of a true test of the student's whole skill set."
Jesse Wingate, assistant director of career services at the College, said he was optimistic about the inclusion of the online calculator, which will likely make the test more equitable for students with test anxiety.
"What we see often, especially at the undergraduate level, is students saying, Oh, I haven't taken math in a long time,'" Wingate said. "Having a calculator, even if it is not useful, is a huge psychological boost."
Wingate said he thought the elimination of analogies and antonyms would also help students taking the test.
"With antonyms and analogies, people tended to do either really well or really horribly," Wingate said. "They would often have to pluck definitions from thin air if they did not know the vocabulary. With reading comprehension, vocabulary can be determined by context."
Wingate said he was skeptical about the increased test length and the introduction of multiple correct-response questions.
"The longer test time could be a challenge for those who struggle with computer-based exams, and multiple correct answer questions will make things more anxiety-producing." Wingate said. "It could make the test significantly more challenging for students, especially those with different learning styles."
The revised GRE will also feature a reformed scoring format. While past takers received a score between 200 and 800, future test takers will receive a score between 130 and 170, with scores given in one-point increments, according to the ETS website.
ETS Representative Tia Clark said the test's changes and new scoring system were meant to better corroborate student performance. The changes will allow graduate school admissions offices to more easily identify the most suitable applicants by their percentile scores.
Clark said the changes in the questions will assist students in some sections and make the test more applicable to graduate school situations.
"In the math section, the on-screen calculator will enable test takers to focus on the questions at hand," Clark said. "There will also be more real-life scenarios put into the test, things that deal with the actual schools."
