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Revised GRE general test launching in August
The current Graduate Records Examination (GRE) General Test will be replaced by the GRE Revised General Test starting from this August, 2011. This will give the test takers in getting a better test experience. A new type of questions will be set up that will help show the readiness for graduate-level work. This is definitely good news for those students who are planning to study abroad.
What is to be expected from the Revised GRE Test?
The Revised GRE Test will be a computer-based test which will enable the students to change or edit their answers, skip questions and more, all of this can be done within a section. This will give the students a chance to use their own test-taking strategies. For the mathematical ability testing section, students can use the on-screen calculator which will be provided to them, students can put in numeric entries on the screen itself. On the whole, it will be more user-centric and user-friendly.
Some changes will be made in these three sections:
Verbal Reasoning: In this section, more emphasis is put on higher level cognitive skills, as a truer, deeper assessment of their ability to understand what they read and how they apply their reasoning skills.
This section measures the ability of the candidates to:
• Analyze and draw conclusions from discourse; reason from incomplete data; identify author's assumptions and/or perspective; understand multiple levels of meaning such as literal, figurative and author's intent
• select important points; distinguish major from minor or relevant points; summarize text; understand the structure of a text
• understand the meanings of words, sentences and entire texts; understand relationships among words and among concepts
Test takers can expect:
• greater emphasis on higher cognitive skills
• more text-based materials, such as reading passages
• less dependence on vocabulary knowledge alone
• broader selection of reading passages
Quantitative Reasoning: In this section, the expected mathematical knowledge of test takers remains unchanged and more emphasis is given on the data interpretation and real-life scenarios, to determine the student’s skills better.
Quantitative Reasoning measures the candidate's ability to:
• Understand quantitative information
• Interpret and analyze quantitative information
• Solve problems using mathematical models
• Apply basic mathematical skills and elementary mathematical concepts of arithmetic, algebra, geometry, probability and statistics
An emphasis on quantitative reasoning skills:
• Increased proportion of questions involving real-life scenarios and data interpretation
• An on-screen calculator for use in this section to reduce the emphasis on computation
• New question types and new computer-enabled tasks, such as entering a numerical answer
Analytical writing: In this section, the test takers will be asked to give more focused responses to questions so they can more accurately exhibit their skill by directly responding to the task presented in this section.
Measures a candidate's ability to:
• articulate complex ideas clearly and effectively
• support ideas with relevant reasons and examples
• examine claims and accompanying evidence
• sustain a well-focused, coherent discussion
• control the elements of standard written English
Scoring scales: Unlike the existing 200-800 scale with 10 point increments, the revised test will feature a new score scale in which both the verbal and quantitative reasoning sections will be scored on a 130-170 scale with 1 point increments.
What is to be expected from the Revised GRE Test?
The Revised GRE Test will be a computer-based test which will enable the students to change or edit their answers, skip questions and more, all of this can be done within a section. This will give the students a chance to use their own test-taking strategies. For the mathematical ability testing section, students can use the on-screen calculator which will be provided to them, students can put in numeric entries on the screen itself. On the whole, it will be more user-centric and user-friendly.
Some changes will be made in these three sections:
Verbal Reasoning: In this section, more emphasis is put on higher level cognitive skills, as a truer, deeper assessment of their ability to understand what they read and how they apply their reasoning skills.
This section measures the ability of the candidates to:
• Analyze and draw conclusions from discourse; reason from incomplete data; identify author's assumptions and/or perspective; understand multiple levels of meaning such as literal, figurative and author's intent
• select important points; distinguish major from minor or relevant points; summarize text; understand the structure of a text
• understand the meanings of words, sentences and entire texts; understand relationships among words and among concepts
Test takers can expect:
• greater emphasis on higher cognitive skills
• more text-based materials, such as reading passages
• less dependence on vocabulary knowledge alone
• broader selection of reading passages
Quantitative Reasoning: In this section, the expected mathematical knowledge of test takers remains unchanged and more emphasis is given on the data interpretation and real-life scenarios, to determine the student’s skills better.
Quantitative Reasoning measures the candidate's ability to:
• Understand quantitative information
• Interpret and analyze quantitative information
• Solve problems using mathematical models
• Apply basic mathematical skills and elementary mathematical concepts of arithmetic, algebra, geometry, probability and statistics
An emphasis on quantitative reasoning skills:
• Increased proportion of questions involving real-life scenarios and data interpretation
• An on-screen calculator for use in this section to reduce the emphasis on computation
• New question types and new computer-enabled tasks, such as entering a numerical answer
Analytical writing: In this section, the test takers will be asked to give more focused responses to questions so they can more accurately exhibit their skill by directly responding to the task presented in this section.
Measures a candidate's ability to:
• articulate complex ideas clearly and effectively
• support ideas with relevant reasons and examples
• examine claims and accompanying evidence
• sustain a well-focused, coherent discussion
• control the elements of standard written English
Scoring scales: Unlike the existing 200-800 scale with 10 point increments, the revised test will feature a new score scale in which both the verbal and quantitative reasoning sections will be scored on a 130-170 scale with 1 point increments.
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