Graduate school hopefuls will soon face one of two new types of questions on the Graduate Record Examination - but for now, the questions won't count.
Starting in November, test-takers will receive either a text completion question in the verbal section or a numeric entry question in the math section. But the new questions won't count toward a student's final score until the Educational Testing Service, which administers the GRE, collects sufficient data about the new questions, according to the ETS Web site.
The GRE General Test is a multiple choice test that evaluates a test-taker's ability to answer questions of varying difficulty - if a test-taker answers questions correctly, more difficult questions are presented, and vice versa. Thousands of students take the test every year as part of the graduate school application process.
The new text completion question in the verbal reasoning section asks students to fill in two or three blanks in a passage from a list of options. Jennifer Kedrowski, GRE program manager at Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions, likens it to the sentence completion portion of the SAT. There is no partial credit for the question, making it especially difficult. "Say you get two of the blanks correct and the third one wrong - you get the question wrong overall," Kedrowski said.
Numeric entry will be introduced in the quantitative reasoning section. Students will be asked to type their answer as a number in a box or as a fraction in two boxes.
Though students will face one of these two new types of questions beginning in November, these questions will not count toward a test-taker's final score until ETS has an adequate sample of data about the question in a testing environment.
"They have to get enough people to respond to the items. You need several thousand responses," said Tricia McCloskey, managing editor of test prep research and development at Princeton Review.
The new questions are welcomed by McCloskey. "I think there is the potential with these new questions to test your ability better," she said.
Kedrowski said she felt that the questions would "be more challenging for students."
The new question types are part of ETS's effort to respond to criticism of the GRE.
"There is a general feeling that the current test doesn't do a good job in measuring the skills needed for graduate school," McCloskey said, adding that the math section is too simple to test reasoning ability well while the verbal section involves a lot of memorization rather than analysis.
The GRE also faced security concerns after questions from its question pool were memorized by some test-takers and posted online.
ETS initially responded to such criticism with a complete overhaul of the test, which was scheduled to launch this month. The new computer-based test would have been one-and-a-half hours longer, with more analytical questions in the verbal section. The revised test also would have replaced the adaptive format with a linear one, ensuring that questions were not repeated.
The test would have been administered only about 30 times a year - currently, it is available almost every day. The scheduling change was a major concern for some students.
But in April, ETS decided to scrap its plans for the new test. "ETS was concerned about the lack of convenience and flexibility," Kedrowski said.
Furthermore, with the planned change to the test's scoring system, many students would have had to have taken the test before the scoring system could be calibrated and scores determined.
ETS dropped the plan to switch to a linear format, and changes - such as the two new question types - will now be made gradually.
The two test-prep companies have competing advice for students who plan to take the test.
"Our philosophy is that you want to spend your preparation time in areas that will affect your score," McCloskey said, but she added that Princeton Review will teach students how to recognize the new questions.
There is a heavy penalty resulting in a lower score if the test is not completed, so the Princeton Review is advising students not to spend time on questions that aren't graded.
Kaplan is opting for a cautious approach. "What Kaplan recommends is to treat them as if they are being scored because you don't know when they are going to count as your score. It's important that students take them seriously," Kedrowski said.
While test prep centers feel confident that they have adapted their programs to include the new questions, students preparing for the GRE aren't as certain. "I'm planning to take it probably October, November, but I would want to take it before the changes," said Julie Flynn '08, who said the changes reminded her of the new SAT, but on a smaller scale.
Since the questions won't count towards her score, she said she is not that worried. "I would rather take it without them but it wouldn't be a big deal," she said.
