A More Meaningful GRE

Seemingly mediocre math problems that somehow trick the solver into making careless errors. Compiling lists of vocabulary words for short-term mass-memorization. The pain generated by graduate school preparation stands to be lessened considerably by changes in the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) set to take effect in a year’s time. And we wholly endorse anything that minimizes a Harvard student’s stress level.

The GRE, an examination required for admission to nearly every reputable graduate program, has long been little more than a rearranged SAT with more sophisticated vocabulary and reading passages. But with what the Educational Testing Service (ETS) calls the most significant overhaul in the GRE’s 55-year history, the test is likely to gain much-needed relevance as an indicator of ability to carry out graduate work.

After four years of research consisting chiefly of consultation with the graduate school deans who sit on the GRE board, ETS will revamp all three sections of the test to include different types of questions. The verbal section will shift emphasis away from knowledge of vocabulary and toward critical reading skills, the quantitative section will replace some geometry questions with data interpretation, and the writing section promises to be shorter and more analytical.

It is heartening to see such a widely used assessment retooled to evaluate reasoning abilities acquired over time through assiduous undergraduate work rather than the same innate talents measured by the SAT and other disguised IQ tests. While standardized test scores can never succinctly capture a candidate’s level of competence, these changes may at least enable the GRE to provide graduate schools with much more useful information than the current version.

As an eminently irksome stage of the graduate school application process, the GRE merits periodic scrutiny to ensure that the examination is in fact worthwhile and well-designed. But inherent problems are certain to remain. In particular, GRE writing section grades are notoriously correlated with essay length. The Princeton Review GRE preparation book admits this trend and even advises test-takers to strategize accordingly.

This ill-conceived scoring method will be counterbalanced, however, by a new policy of sending, along with scores, the writing samples themselves to graduate school admissions committees, who can evaluate their quality more adeptly than GRE graders.

Prospective graduate school students have reason to rejoice at most of the changes to the GRE slated to be implemented next October (excepting, most notably, the reduction of the frequency of test dates for the General Test from daily to 29 per year). Even as the medical and law school admissions tests remain poorly organized, the GRE is changing for the better.