The New Revised GRE
The Graduate record Examination, GRE General Test is all set to get a fresh look from August 2011. ETS (Educational Testing Services), the educational body that conducts the GRE worldwide, believes that the new Revised GRE will give students a better testing experience. The test has especially been revised to test students on real life skills that are required in today’s demanding corporate life.
The following are some of the key changes that students can expect from the GRE Revised General Test:
A New User Friendly Interface: The greatest advantage of the current interface is that unlike the earlier version, students will now be able to tag questions so that they can skip these and come back and answer them later. While students are within the section they can also edit their answer options. For students who found online reading a cumbersome activity, the Revised GRE offers an option of highlighting text so that students can comprehend the passage better. Another advantage is the availability of an online calculator for students.
Changes in Verbal Questions: The new Revised GRE seeks to test students on skills that are required to succeed in graduate and business education. The emphasis is more on cognition skills that help in decision making and analysis. Keeping this in mind, questions like antonyms and analogies have been removed. Instead of these there will be new text and sentence completion questions. There will also be more emphasis on reading comprehension questions. The objective of this change is that students are able to select important points, summarise text, distinguish important points from minor points and structure text.
Changes in Quantitative Questions: The new Quantitative section will have questions with more than one correct answer option. There will also be a set of new numeric entry questions, where students will have to key in the correct answers in a matrix or a box instead of marking answer options. In this revised format, the emphasis is less on computation and more on analysis and understanding of quantitative problems and application of elementary mathematical concepts of arithmetic, algebra, geometry, probability and statistics to solve such problems.
New Scoring Scale: The Revised GRE will have a new scoring scale. As compared to the old scale of 200-800 with a 10 point increment that existed earlier, the new scoring scale for both the Verbal and Quantitative sections will be in the scale of 130-170 with a one point increment. The Analytical Writing score will be in the range of 0=6 with a half point increment. The new one point increments are meant to bring more clarity and distinctness in student scores.
To promote the test, ETS a special discount of 50% in terms of the test fee for students opting to take the Revised Test between August 1 and September 30, 2011. The new GRE Revised Test holds a lot of promise for test takers. With increasing number of B-schools accepting the GRE scores, students have an option of one more test besides the GMAT. The GRE is also a better option for students to opt to study for dual degree programmes, like MBA/Mtech. etc. Such students can fulfill the admission requirements of both the degrees by taking the GRE.
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