Title: 
Change In GRE postponed until 2007

Word Count:
719

Summary:
The ETS, which contemplating the change in GRE, even announced the 
date of implementation once again.


Keywords:
GRE Test, GMAT, SAT, TOEFL, IELTS Test Preparation, University Selection, Visa Counseling, Financial Aid, Scholarships, Essay, SOP, LOR, resume


Article Body:
The ETS, which contemplating the change in GRE, even announced the  date of implementation once again given the relief of shy to the  students by delaying its implementation for exactly a year. The  highly anticipated and complex changes to the Graduate Record  Examination (GRE) will begin in October 2007 rather than October  2006, a whole year later in the fall of 2007, company officials  announce last week. 

 
Another wave of changes has swept over the Graduate Record  Examination according to the Educational Testing Service, which,  beginning in October 2006 delayed until October 2007, will affect  the approximately 400,000 U.S. students who take the test annually.  "It will undergo its biggest overhaul from October 2007 in the 57  years of GRE history. ETS believes the delay will better serve test  takers and graduate institutions across the country as ETS  transitions from the current computer- and paper-based forms of the  test to the new Internet-based (iBT) version.
“The higher education and graduate communities are excited about the  revised GRE,” explains Mari Pearlman, Senior Vice President of ETS’s  Higher Education Division. “They worked with us to create this  revised test, and they are looking forward to using this test. The  new launch schedule will enable us to complete the expansion of our  Internet-based testing operations worldwide.” 

The change was announced last year, but details have not been  released until now. These changes will impact important aspects of  the test such as score range; the type of questions asked how the  officials will evaluate the scores, and more. 


Madeline Hamblin, director of the Office of Graduate Affairs at the  University, said that the delay was sensible. “I think it was a good  move,” she said. “It would not be wise to start a new test before  test centers were set up.”


Test development, design and field testing will continue for the new  GRE test. The new iBT delivery platform is already being used to  deliver the innovative new Test of English as a Foreign Language™  (TOEFL®) exam worldwide. ETS plans to improve student access to its  tests by adding thousands of testing sites worldwide in the next two  years.

The GRE exam measures critical thinking, analytical writing, verbal  reasoning, and quantitative reasoning skills that have been acquired  over a long period of time and are not related to any specific field  of study. 

Changes to the exam included: greater emphasis on higher cognitive  skills and less dependence on vocabulary, expansion of computer  based tasks, on-screen four-function calculators with square root  features, and more focused questions to ensure analytical writing. 
Highlights of Changes which ETS Considering:

>>> The new GRE General Test will be slightly over four hours long,  an increase from the current two-and-a-half-hour exam. It will also  no longer be offered in a computer-adaptive format, where the  difficulty of the test is determined by the test taker’s right or  wrong answers. Instead, it will be offered in a linear format, in  which every student takes the same exam.

>>> Unlike the current exam, each version of the revised GRE General  Test will be used only once, and no test takers will encounter the  same questions on different dates. Instead of continuous testing,  the exam will be given 29 times a year worldwide. The number of  administrations in any given region will depend on the test volumes  in that region. 

>>> The revised GRE General Test will be administered in the ETS  global network of Internet-based test centers and through Thomson  Prometric, the world’s largest computer-based testing network.
Changes in the Verbal and Quantitative Score Scales
The new score scales will have 40–50 scale points. The scales will  increase in one-point increments and will be centered between 120  and 179. The actual score ranges will be finalized in 2006 based on  field test results. 

>>> A concordance table to compare old and new Verbal and  Quantitative scores will be available.

>>> The analytical writing section will continue to be scored using  a six-point holistic scale.‘These changes are intended to make the GRE General Test a more accurate gauge of how qualified prospective students are to do  graduate-level work,” David Payne, Executive Director of the GRE  Program in ETS’ Higher Education Division explained recently to the  Signal. “We’ll also offer more interpretive information to graduate  deans and faculty, including providing access to test takers’ essay  responses on the Analytical Writing section.” 
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