As The Polytechnic reported last year, Executive Director of the GRE program David G. Payne said the changes constitute “the largest changes to the constructs we’re assessing.” The changes affect all sections of the current general test and also will involve the elimination of the computer adaptive scoring algorithm. In addition, while current general test administrations are scheduled by individual appointments, the new GRE will only be offered on set dates around the world at staggered times. He explained last week that the main reason for the delay of implementing the changes is to ensure that the transition goes as smoothly as possible.

According to Payne, ETS recommended the delay to the GRE Board in February and the board unanimously supported it. He stated that ETS is the first company using the Internet for what he called “high stakes testing.” He noted that one lesson they learned when they started offering the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) in a similar internet-based format on only given test dates, was that they had to ensure that there were enough seats; this would make certain that all who wanted to sit for the test, could. The delay for the GRE gives ETS one more year to test and expand their network. Payne said that there have been no security problems with the Internet-based TOEFL and that external consultants have verified that the security is comparable or higher than it is for financial web-based transactions.

Both the verbal and quantitative sections will be expanded to include two separate 40 minute sections. The analytical writing section will be renamed to critical thinking and analytical writing and will have two 30 minute essays, as opposed to the current 30 and 45 minute setup. While the current test is only 2.5 hours, plus a possible research or experimental section, the changes will make the new GRE three hours and 40 minutes long, plus a possible research or experimental section.

The changes to the verbal section will attempt to emphasize critical thinking skills, rather than vocabulary. Analogy and antonym questions will be eliminated, and different types of reading comprehension and sentence completion questions will be used. Students will see many more, but shorter, comprehension passages. Some of the new questions allow the student to select multiple answers.

In addition, new sentence completions might have more than two blanks spread over several sentences. Unlike the current two-blank sentence completion where each choice consists of a possible pair of words, the new type allows each blank to be answered independently of the other. In order to receive credit, however, all of the words chosen must represent the best answers.

Payne explained that they did consider giving partial credit to test takers who only chose the best response for some of the blanks in a question’s paragraph. It was found, though, that doing this did not change the score much at all. In extreme cases, he said, it was causing a change of less than 10-20 points, using the current scoring scale. As such, the decision was made to score them holistically, thus making all the best choices necessary to earn credit. He stated “We really looked at that.”

The quantitative section will see both an increase in questions involving data or real-life scenarios and a decrease in geometry-related questions. In addition, questions may ask the test taker to enter a numeric answer, as opposed to selecting a choice; a five function calculator (including square root) will be available on-screen. Payne said that the addition of the calculator was consistent with recommendations from math associations. He added that the point of the section is to assess math reasoning, not computation.

Aside from the name and time constraint changes, the writing section will see an entirely new set of prompts written to minimize the amount of material that can be memorized prior to the exam. In addition, while score reports for the current GRE only include the scores earned on the writing section, the new GRE will allow those who receive scores to view the actual essays supplied by students during their test.

Payne said that the move away from the computer adaptive test was mainly for security reasons. In some cases, current GRE questions (of varying difficulty written for adaptive testing) that have been reused have been posted on some websites, giving some test takers an unfair advantage. The questions used in the linear tests will not be reused, eliminating this problem.

In order to easily distinguish between scores on the current GRE and the new GRE, the scoring scales will change from 200-800 in 10-point increments to around 110-150, in one-point increments, although the final scaling might still see some small changes. Another goal for the scaling change is to make the verbal and quantitative means closer in value.

Acting Director for Graduate Admissions George Robbins said that there is currently “not enough information yet,” for RPI to have decided exactly how they are going to use the new GRE scores. He added that RPI is still evaluating it and that once the appropriate committee makes its recommendations, they will eventually be forwarded to the provost and dean for Graduate Education.

While the testing network will see many expansions for administration of the new general test, it is currently not fully clear whether or not RPI will be offering the exam on campus. Bob Conway, assistant to the vice provost, said that as of the present time it is not likely that RPI will begin to offer GRE General Test administration on campus.