By Christina Oddo

Writer

The Graduate Record Exam (GRE) General Test for graduate or business students has been revised by the Educational Testing Service (ETS) and will be available online in August.

According to Andrea Halpern, professor of psychology and graduate school advising coordinator, there will be fewer verbal sections, and the test will be more oriented towards reading comprehension than towards isolated word knowledge.

“The math section will have a calculator available,” Halpern said. “The scoring scale will change so that scores will vary by ones, not tens, unlike the current 600-610-620 etc. scale.”

Furthermore, students will be able to edit answers, change answers and skip questions within a section. This new method may be beneficial for some students “to the extent that students feel the ability to review and change answers gives them more control and puts them in a more positive frame of mind,” Halpern said.

Currently, if you answer some questions incorrectly, the following questions are easier and vice versa. “It’s unclear to what extent the test is ‘adaptive,’” Halpern said.

The revised GRE will also have new types of questions that will feature real-life scenarios that reflect the thinking that many graduate programs support and encourage. The new test will also present a new score scale that will make it easier for schools to compare GRE scores.

More information regarding the adaptive-level approach for the GRE changes will be available soon. For further inquiry, visit http://www.ets.org/gre/revised_general/know