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A revamped version of the Graduate Record Examination, which is administered to almost half a million would-be psychologists, journalists and other graduate-school applicants every year, is set to be instituted in October 2006.

Following changes to two other widely used standardized tests -- the Medical College Admission Test and the Test of English as a Foreign Language -- the Educational Testing Service announced last week that the GRE will be altered as well.

The test will be lengthened to about four hours from its current length of two and a half hours. The scale will also be shifting from 200-800 points to a 40 or 50 point scale centered somewhere between 120 and 179.

All three sections -- verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning and analytical writing -- are being revised.

Moreover, the exam -- which has been computer-based for the past seven years, according to Ben Baron, vice president of graduate programs at Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions -- will no longer be "computer adaptive."

Students used to receive questions tailored to their performance on previous questions. Now, every test-taker on a particular day will receive the same questions, and, unlike under the old system, those questions will not be reused.

"The questions are probably going to be more rigorous," Baron added, saying that Kaplan is urging students who can take the current form of the exam to do so. This sentiment was echoed by Michele Taylor, associate director of Career Services, who estimates that roughly a third of Penn undergraduates take the GRE every year.

Administration of the test will also be changed, from dates personally chosen by students -- on any day of the year -- to a set sequence of about 30 dates per year. Baron said that this system will be more similar to paper exams like the Law School Admission Test.

Individualization of the old GRE was problematic for both test-takers and test-makers. It prevented students from "skipping around" between questions on the test and "required [ETS to write] an enormous pool of questions," Baron said.

The new system will enable tightened security, which has been a high priority for ETS since 2002, when two Columbia University students were caught electronically transmitting test questions. In another incident, some applicants from East Asia were able to memorize questions posted on the Internet by other test-takers in 2002.

In addition to the single use of questions, tests will be administered at different times in different time zones so questions cannot be passed on to those testing later in the day.

Overall, Taylor said ETS hopes the changes will help admissions officers "more accurately gauge how qualified" applicants are. They will also be able to access a candidate's GRE writing sample under the new system, instead of simply a writing score.

"There is going to be a difficult transition," Taylor said, "it's going to take a year or two to get the kinks out of the system."

At the graduate division of the School of Arts and Sciences, administrators are currently attending ETS-sponsored sessions on the GRE's changes and have thus far responded positively to the new exam.

"Any kind of enhancements that are made to the tests are helpful [because they can] give us a better picture of how a student will perform," said Patricia Rea, coordinator of graduate admissions for SAS.

ETS also administers GRE subject tests, which are taken by a smaller number of prospective graduate students and are not currently being revised.

The GRE's new look Beginning in October 2006, the Graduate Record Examination will appear radically different from its current form:

- The testing period is expanding from two and a half hours to four hours. - The exam will change from an on-demand, computer-adaptive format to a linear computer format with 30 set testing dates per year. - Scoring will no longer be on a 200-800 scale. ETS has not finalized the new scale, but it will likely fall around 120-170 points. - Verbal reasoning is expanding from one 30-minute section to two 40-minute sections. - Analogies are being discarded in favor of reading comprehension. Instead of determining the equivalence of two words, students will now be asked to identify equivalent statements and incorrectly supported theses in sample readings

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