GRE

The GRE revised General Test

The GRE test is taken up by many student's all around the world, who want to pursue their graduate or business degree to provide an important boost to their future career.

August 1, 2011, the GRE revised General Test will replace the current GRE General Test, giving student's the advantage of a better test experience with new types of questions which are user friendly that will help show a candidate's readiness for graduate-level work.

The following changes can be expected  from the GRE general Test:

Computer based Test

• A new friendlier design- This lets a candidate edit or change his answers, skip questions and more, all within a section, giving him the freedom to use more of his own test-taking strategies.
  

The following are the notable changes in the Computer based test:

* New preview and review capabilities within a section

* New "mark and review" feature to tag questions, so you can skip and return later

* The ability to change/edit answers within a section

* An on-screen calculator for the Quantitative Reasoning section

* New answer formats, including tasks such as numeric entry and highlighting a sentence in a passage to answer a question

* Less reliance on vocabulary out of context, more emphasis on reading - and no antonyms or analogies

* There will be new types of questions in the Verbal Reasoning and Quantitative Reasoning sections, many featuring real-life scenarios that reflect the practical way of thinking required in present day's demanding graduate and business school programs.

The new flexible design will make the whole Test experience friendlier, giving the institutions an idea of the skills that the candidate has.

• Change in the Test structure and length- With the Testing time for computer based revised general Test becoming 3.45 hours, there will be a small change in Test structure. There are basically six sections to the revised test which are:

* An Analytical Writing section with two separately timed writing tasks

* Two Verbal Reasoning sections

* Two Quantitative Reasoning sections

* One non-scoring section, typically a Verbal Reasoning or Quantitative Reasoning section that may appear at any point in the computer-based GRE revised General Test

* An identified research section that is not scored may also be included in the computer-based GRE revised General Test.

Below, is a breakup of the task and timings for each section:

There is a 10 minute break following the third section, and a 1 minute break between the other sections.

Paper based general Test

• A new friendlier design
  

* The paper-based test will continue to be a linear test, but there will be a paper-based equivalent of all the new question types. So, even test takers who take the paper-based test will benefit from the new questions like text completions and numeric entry.

The only new question type not included in the paper-based test is highlighting an answer within a reading passage.

* Test answers will now be entered in the Test book, rather than a separate answer sheet.

* An ETS calculator will be provided to be used during the Quantitative Reasoning section rather than the student's own.

• Changes in Test structure and length- The paper based test will last for 2.15 hours with the following break-up:

Changes in Test questions for the 3 sections:

Verbal Reasoning: Placing a great value on higher level cognitive skills, the following changes have been made.

• Antonyms and analogies have been removed from the test
• New text completion questions test a candidate's ability to interpret, evaluate and reason from what he's read. Filling in important words into short passages by selecting words or phrases will need to be done.
• More reading comprehension questions have been added such as multiple choice questions and sentence highlighting within a given passage.
  

Quantitative Reasoning: With more emphasis on data interpretation and real-life scenarios together with knowledge of basic mathematics, the following changes have been made.

• New set of Multiple Choice questions which include some that have more than one correct answer
• New Numeric Entry questions require one to answer in a box instead of selecting an answer from a list.
  

Analytical Writing section: Providing more focused responses based on the tasks presented rather than a general response, is the update in this section which will involve the following changes.

• For each essay task, there will be one topic given, rather than a choice of topics.
• Tasks are now more specific, and responses will be measured to ensure a candidate integrates critical thinking and analytical writing by fully addressing the tasks presented.
  

In addition to the above, the score scale will also be updated as detailed below:

• Verbal Reasoning scores will be reported on a new 130 - 170 score scale, in 1-point increments (versus 200 - 800 in 10-point increments).
• Quantitative Reasoning scores will be reported on a new 130 - 170 score scale, in 1-point increments (versus 200 - 800 in 10-point increments).
• Analytical Writing scores will continue to be reported on the same 0 - 6 score level, in half-point increments.
  

These scores will ensure that candidate's scores are compared much more fairly with those from other countries, making it easy for institutions selecting them.

Some other features of the new GRE Test are:

• A special savings of 50% when a candidate takes the GRE revised General Test between August 1 and September 30, 2011.
  

• Important score reporting information: If the GRE revised General Test is taken during the special discount period of August - September 2011, the candidate's scores will be sent by mid-November. However, those who need scores before November 2011 must take the current test before August 2011.
  

Choosing Between the Current Test and the Revised Test

For those confused as to which GRE test to take- whether the old or the revised one, it makes sense to first select which schools he is most interested in attending, then finding out when they need the scores for admissions. Different schools have different admissions deadlines, so knowing when the prospective schools needs an individual's scores is an important part of the decision making process.

• If the GRE revised General Test is taken during the special discount period of August - September 2011, the candidate's scores will be sent by mid-November.
  
• If the test is taken in October - November 2011, the score reporting schedule will be as per the details on the ETS website.
  
• If the scores are needed before November 2011, the current test has to be taken before November 2011 to make sure the candidate has the scores in time.