Ma Yingju

Princeton, N.J. — For the 700,000 hopeful students who take a GRE® test each year, August 1 marks the dawn of a new and brighter era — the launch of the GRE® revised General Test. The most significant change in the GRE Program’s 60-year history, the new test has already earned praise from the graduate and business school community and, in its first day, received rave reviews from test takers worldwide.

"I can move back and forth to check questions that I am not sure about; I like this function very much," said Ma Yingju, a GRE test taker in Beijing, China. "The official preparation materials provided by ETS are also very important. I used them before taking the real test. My suggestion to students who plan to take the GRE revised test is: be relaxed and be yourself."

Lindsey Todd, a GRE test-taker in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania adds, “Being able to flag questions and go back to them in the review section was really, really cool because I was able to go back and work on the questions that I wasn’t sure about. And, I used the on-screen calculator a lot, it was really helpful.”

With new questions, a new score scale and a new test-taker friendly design, the GRE revised General Test offers applicants a friendlier, more technically advanced test that is designed to provide graduate and business schools with even more reliable results. With the freedom to move back and forth, edit or change answers, and skip and return to questions, all within a section, candidates have the ability to use more of their own test-taking strategies. New questions emphasize real-world scenarios and there is less reliance on vocabulary out of context, adding to the appeal of the revised test. The new Verbal Reasoning and Quantitative Reasoning score scale, from 130–170 in one-point increments, will enable admissions professionals to better compare candidates’ scores as it makes small differences in scoring look small, while bigger differences will continue to stand out.

“The launch of the GRE revised General Test marks a new era in graduate and business school admissions; an era that means a friendlier testing experience and even more useful results for graduate and business schools,” said David Payne, Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of ETS’s Higher Education Division. “We are excited to share this new test that better meets the needs of today’s candidates and admissions professionals, yet maintains our commitment to fair, valid and reliable assessments.”

For students in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Korea, the launch of the GRE revised General Test has some added good news. The GRE revised General Test will now be offered all on computer, all in one day, compared to the split-test format that was previously administered in those regions. In addition, the GRE revised General Test will be administered more frequently in these regions with one to two administrations per month. With this change, test takers from these areas will save money as the split-test pricing tier was eliminated and they now pay the international test fee.

The GRE revised General Test is the most widely accepted and accessible graduate admissions test in the world. Today, GRE scores are used by thousands of graduate and business school programs worldwide, including more than 600 MBA programs. Each year prospective graduate and business school applicants from 230 countries and regions take the test.

To register for the GRE revised General Test, visit http://www.ets.org/gre/revised_general/register/. Prospective test takers registering to take the GRE revised General Test in August or September 2011 will receive a 50 percent discount on their test fee. For more information and resources for prospective test takers visit www.ets.org/gre.

Institutions that use GRE scores can find additional information about the GRE revised General Test at www.ets.org/gre/institutions.

About ETS
At ETS, we advance quality and equity in education for people worldwide by creating assessments based on rigorous research. ETS serves individuals, educational institutions and government agencies by providing customized solutions for teacher certification, English language learning, and elementary, secondary and post-secondary education, as well as conducting education research, analysis and policy studies. Founded as a nonprofit in 1947, ETS develops, administers and scores more than 50 million tests annually — including the TOEFL® and TOEIC® tests, the GRE® tests and The Praxis Series™assessments — in more than 180 countries, at over 9,000 locations worldwide. www.ets.org

Contact::
Christine Betaneli
1-609-683-2676
mediacontacts@ets.org