Short-term ill effects of GRE changes

The GRE is changing.

Please do not panic.

This might be a good thing “”mdash; at least in the long term.

Starting in August 2011, the Educational Testing Service will launch its revised general test, and college students across the nation will be the first official guinea pigs.

Graduate school has become so commonplace for today’s undergraduates that even the slightest tweak to its primary entrance exam merits this board’s attention.

And the ETS is doing more than tweaking its test. It is reforming its entire approach at the worst possible time for students preparing for the fall 2011 exam.

Those pesky analogies are no more. In their place are the sorts of critical thinking and reading comprehension questions we all got so used to throughout primary and secondary school.

And the qualitative section will reflect more real-life scenarios and will ask students to generate answers themselves ““ sometimes without answer choices or with multiple answers.

We find that these changes to the actual test are immensely positive and long overdue.

For years, the GRE has forced its takers to relentlessly study vocabulary they will seldom, if ever, use in their daily speech. But the changes to the test reflect a desire for the high-stakes exam to measure the sort of skills one develops during a college career, rather than during a month of cramming.

Similarly, the qualitative section of the test will be able to better determine if students can come to an answer through their qualitative reasoning skills and analysis, rather than simply plugging in some answer choices and seeing what fits.

In the long term, then, these changes will better serve students and their graduate schools.

The short term might be a different story.

The ETS’s choice to change the exam at exactly the juncture students begin to take it is deeply detrimental to the upcoming class of graduate students. These students will have no time to prepare adequately for a new test, and even the ETS admits this test requires preparation.

Not only is the ETS advertising new test prep material, it is also offering a discount to all students who are willing to sit for the test in its first month of existence. The implication here is clear: The first students to take this test will be disadvantaged and require some incentive as an equalizer.

The ETS surely could have chosen to launch the exam in the spring or winter ““ a time when the volume of test takers is much smaller. It could have opened a larger window for multiple practice exams to become available and it even could have developed a transitional year in which both exams would be administered and accepted.

Instead, students are stuck with a new exam and the anxiety that comes with feeling unprepared.

And a 50 percent discount on the exam won’t dissipate that anxiety.

Unsigned editorials represent the majority opinion of the editorial board.

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