US university aspirants, LISTEN UP!!

On April 2, the Educational Testing Service (ETS) announced that plans to launch the revised Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) have been cancelled. The decision was made in consultation with the executive committee of the GRE board. 

While ETS and the board still plan to revise the current design, GRE officials said that potential access problems to the new Internet-based test outweighed the benefits of an immediate change in format.

ETS originally planned to launch the revised GRE General Test worldwide in September.  Instead, the company will continue to offer the test worldwide in its current computer-based, continuous testing format. Registrations in India, China and Japan, which had been closed, will be reopened in the near future to accommodate application deadlines.

This is a dramatic turn of events, as Indian students, provided they take the test as soon as possible, may be able to register for the Fall 2007 semester.

"The decision to cancel the revised GRE General Test best serves the interests of test takers and the graduate institutions that use those scores to make admissions decisions," said David Payne, executive director of the GRE programme at ETS.

"After much debate and evaluation, it became clear that the current format offers students more convenient and flexible opportunities to test when and where they choose, while still providing score users with valid predictors of test takers' preparedness for graduate school study," he added

The primary reason for cancelling the launch of the revised GRE was test taker access. Plans called for the revised test to be delivered over the new worldwide network of 3,200 Internet-based testing centres that ETS currently uses to deliver the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language).  Despite the network's size, ETS officials did not believe that full access to the GRE for all students could be assured. 

"As the launch approached, ETS determined that, despite the aggressive development of our Internet-based testing network, we could not guarantee complete access to all students needing to take the exam" Payne said.

"While the graduate community supports, and in fact helped develop and pilot the revised GRE General Test, they have also stated that they are satisfied with the current General Test, until such time as improvements can be gradually implemented.  ETS is being responsive to their best interests."

ETS officials will work with the GRE board in order to implement many of the planned test content improvements in the future.