Changes made in graduate testing
The Graduate Record Exam (GRE) will change August 2011, in hopes that the new format and test questions will better reflect what students need to know in the real world and show graduate schools the depth of knowledge applicants have.
The content and format of the test will change, said USU testing supervisor Eric Jensen. The types of questions asked in each section has been modified for a more up-to-date feel, he said.
“The argument has been ‘what does this test have to do with real life situations?’ There will be improvements to it. It is more like what we see in real life,” Jensen said.
Business graduate student Matt Todd said when he took the GRE it was just “another hoop to jump through,” and the things he was tested on don’t really have anything to do with what he has learned in grad school.
“I think there are so many other factors that go into success that are beyond standardize tests,” Todd said. “The GRE, in my opinion, certainly didn’t test on anything you are going to get in graduate programs.”
It’s that overall feeling that the test companies want to change, Fawson said. She said the new GRE questions will make students apply what they have learned and will make it easier for students who show that they have the skills graduate schools are looking for.
April Fawson, graduate admissions officer, said it is going to be easier for students to articulate their ideas.
According to the new GRE website, the questions focus more on the “types of skills that are required to meet today’s demanding graduate and business school expectations.”
Fawson said with the current version, students make decisions based on minute differences in skill. With the changes to how questions are asked, it will better represent college reasoning and analytical skills, she said.
With these changes, Fawson said the scores will better reflect the differences between two students. Right now, she said graduate schools make a decision about an applicant when they see a student with a score of 600 and a student with a score of 650 and think it is a huge difference when it was only a one- or two-point difference.
The current scoring system has the verbal and quantitative reasoning scores with a 200-800 scale with 10-point increments and the analytical writing has a 0-6 point scale with half-point increments. With the new GRE, the scoring for the analytical writing section will stay the same, but the verbal and quantitative reasoning sections will have a 130-170 scale with one-point increments.
According to the GRE website, with these changes, “small differences in scoring will look like small differences, while bigger differences will continue to stand out.”
With the concern that graduate schools won’t know how to compare the scores from the current and new test, Jensen said each school will be getting a score comparison chart while the new GRE is transitioning.
When a school receives a student’s GRE score after the new test has been introduced, they will receive the scores in both the old test scale, and the new test scale. This will ensure that schools will understand what they are looking at, Jensen said.
The format of the test has undergone a complete overhaul as well. The current GRE uses an adaptive format. Students are not answering the same questions as their neighbor, and usually not even the same number of questions. The test will start out with easier questions and based on if the student gets them right or wrong, the computer will adjust back and forth until the score is determined. Jensen said with the adaptive format, students can’t go back and change their answers later. Once they move on to the next question, that’s it. However, the new GRE will have a linear format which will have the same amount of questions, throughout each section. Within a single student, a student can go back to any question and change their answer. Jensen said this “creates a very different environment” for the test.
“When we made the change to adaptive some years back there were a lot of students who complained,” Jensen said. “They liked the idea of being able to go back and change their answers. Students feel like they have more control over a linear test. You can change your mind, if you get clues from other questions or the answer comes back to your memory, you have the ability to fix your answer.”
The main change students will have to deal with for the first few months of the new test being administered is the time it will take for students to receive their tests back. Right now, the normal rate for getting scores back is two to three weeks, but Jensen said for the first few months of the new test students shouldn’t expect their scores for a few months, rather than a few weeks.
Jensen said those students who take the test between Aug. 1 when it will first be released, and Sept. 20, will not get their scores back until early Nov. Students who take the test in October won’t get their scores until mid-November and students who take the test early in November won’t get their scores until the end of the month. By the first of December, students who take the test will receive their scores in the normal three- to four-week time frame.
Fawson said the time lag is important because those first few months is when the median for the test is determined.
“They need to get enough scores in their “bank” to be able to determine what the median of the test is going to be. They will take each day’s test and compare those scores and do that for the first few months,” Fawson said.
Jensen said the testing center needs a large sample of scores to “standardize” the test. He said the students who take the test those first few months will normalize the test and this will be how scores will be calculated to be equivalent to the scores on the old test.
Those students who choose to take the new GRE Aug. 1 through Sept. 20 will only have to pay half price, Jensen said.
“Students can get that 50 percent discount if they are OK with waiting much longer than usual for their scores,” he said.
Fawson said it is important for students to figure out when they need their GRE scores, because that will determine which test to take. She said those who can wait and who don’t need their scores until 2012 can take the new test but anyone who needs their scores by Fall 2011 should sign up for the current test soon.
– megan.b@aggiemail.usu.edu