Students wishing to take the Graduate Record Exam after 2011 will face changes in its content and grading scale.
The Educational Testing Service, which administers the G.R.E., called the changes "the largest revisions" in the history of the test. It was announced at the annual meeting with the Council of Graduate Schools last Friday.
The exam will still include sections on verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning and analytical writing, but each section will be revised, according to its Web site.
"The changes were made to make a better prediction of student success in the graduate program," said Jonathan Cumming, assistant vice president for graduate education at West Virginia University.
The Educational Testing Service changed the verbal section to be more logical-reasoning based than memorization, Cumming said.
"It will be a better indicator of a student's ability to use logic instead of forcing them to memorize vocabulary," he siad.
Sophomore English and secondary education major Anna Jo Morris agreed.
"Even if you can't memorize specific details, you can use logic to come to an acceptable answer," she said.
The biggest difference is prompts on the G.R.E. will be more focused than before, said David G. Payne, head of the G.R.E. program for the testing services, in The New York Times.
"Meaning that our human raters will know unambiguously that the answer was written in response to the question, not memorized," Payne said.
The G.R.E. currently has a 200-point to 800-point scoring scale with 10-point increments. Beginning in 2011, the test will be graded on a scale of 130 points to 170 points with one-point increments.
More than 600,000 prospective graduate school applicants from approximately 230 countries take the G.R.E. General Test each year, according to its Web site.
Applicants come from varying educational backgrounds and countries, and the G.R.E. General Test provides the only common measure for comparing their qualifications.
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