Students considering graduate school can expect changes to the current GRE exam by August 2011, Neill Seltzer, national director of GRE content, said.

The GRE revisions will include a different scoring scale and the option for students to skip questions. Analogies and antonyms will also be eliminated, and the exam will be more tailored to the test takers’ skills.  

The current structure of the test is similar to the SATs of 20 years ago, Seltzer said. The SATs have since evolved, but the GRE has not.

“[The Educational Testing Service] has been constantly fighting criticism from people who are looking at, say, a graduate program in literature who are wondering why they have to take a test on geometry and algebra,” Seltzer said. “[ETS] says they have made it more relevant, and that it tests skills that are applicable in graduate school.”

The GRE is a computer-administered test that is made of three sections: verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning and an analytical writing measure. Dawn Piacentino, director of GRE communications and services, said more than 650,000 students take the test every year.

The biggest change ETS will make to the test is the option for test takers to skip questions and go back to them later. This will allow students to go through the test and answer the questions they know how to do first and then go back to the ones they didn’t know right away, said Seltzer.

Senior Delia Beck, a psychology major, recently took the exam to apply for a graduate program in clinical psychology and said the inability for test takers to skip questions affects scores.

“My biggest concern is that it tested me on subjects I didn’t have to take, like math, and didn’t accuratly show my clinical psychology knowledge,” she said.

Other revisions include a longer composition section and a focus on real-world situations. It is also changing multiple choice questions to numeric entry questions where students have to come up with their own answer.

Students applying to graduate school for fall 2010 or fall 2011 will take the current GRE test. Those who apply for fall 2012 will have a choice between taking the old or new test, Seltzer said. For that year, graduate schools will accept either test score.

Another major revision is the current verbal reasoning and quantitative reasoning sections that are graded on a 200-800 point scale with 10-point increments. The new test will be scored on a 130-170 scale with one-point increments.

Through Academic Enrichment Services, Ithaca College offers GRE preparation courses from Kaplan, Inc. AES also offers practice tests in the spring and fall semesters.

Piacentino said public reaction to the announcement so far has been positive.

“These are changes I think the graduate community will see the value of,” she said.