Students preparing to take standardized tests such as the Medical College Admission Test and Graduate Record Examinations may find themselves taking the tests under very different conditions than their predecessors.
Beginning in September 2007, the GRE will undergo major changes to its content as well as to the way the test is administered.
The current test consists of a verbal and quantitative section as well as a section on analytical writing. The verbal section is undergoing the biggest changes, Dawn Piacentino, associate director for the GRE, said. Sections on antonyms and analogies will be removed and there will be more emphasis on “inferential reasoning” (the ability to reason based on the information in a reading sample), verbal reasoning and context, and reading comprehension.
Questions in the quantitative section will involve more real-life scenarios and data interpretation and the emphasis on geometry will be reduced. The test will also provide test-takers with an on-screen calculator that can complete square roots, Piacentino said. Both the verbal and quantitative sections will have new question formats other than the traditional multiple choice questions.
The analytical writing section is also changing. Although the two types of questions-one that asks takers to analyze an argument and another that asks takers for their own argument-will not be changing, Piacentino said the directions will ask for more focused, specific answers.
“What we’re trying to do is prevent people from submitting memorized material,” she said.
More targeted answers will be a better indicator of whether people actually understand arguments and have good critical analysis skills, she said.
The scoring scale for the test will change along with the content, something Piacentino said is recommended by several educational organizations. The current scale ranks the verbal and quantitative sections on a scale of 200-800 with the scoring in 10-point increments; on the new test, those sections will be ranked on a scale of 150-170 scored in one point increments.
Along with the content, there are major changes in the way the GRE will be administered.
Currently, the GRE is an “adaptive test,” meaning that questions change based on the test-takers’ previous answers. The test starts out with medium-level questions. As test-takers answer more difficult questions correctly, the computer gives them harder questions. If difficult questions are answered incorrectly, the computer will chose easier questions. Scores are based on the difficulty of the questions, Piacentino, said.
Adaptive tests are more individualized but do not allow students to skip questions or go back and change answers, Piacentino said. Beginning in September, the GRE will be in a linear format, meaning that everyone at an administration of the test will see the same set of questions. This format gives takers more power over how they manage time, she said.
“With a linear test, it’s a more familiar, (user) friendly test in that test-takers will be able to omit questions and go back and change answers, more of what you’re used to, so test takers will be able to better allocate their time,” she said. “They can spend more time on difficult questions. It lets (them) decide how to approach the test.”
The test is also changing from a continuous test (meaning it is offered at any time throughout the year), to 29 fixed administrations per year. Regions of the world in which there is less demand for the test will have fewer test dates, Piacentino said.
“We will have enough administrations in any given region that anyone who wants to take the test will be able to take it,” she said.
Because the test will be administered on the Internet, people across the country will be starting at the same time, meaning if the test starts at noon on the East Coast, it will begin at 9 a.m. on the West Coast. This will prevent people from sharing questions and answers with those in other time zones, Piacentino said.
David Espinoza, coordinator of testing services at the University, said the testing center has done Internet Based Testing with the TOEFL exam and has had a few problems with it. Depending on what time the test starts on the East Coast, it is either easier or more difficult for the University to schedule at the same time. He also said the centralized servers cause problems when they break down.
“This morning we had a test that had a 7:30 start time, we didn’t get people started until about 9:30,” he said. “When you have a system based on a centralized process where you run the risk of a single point of failure, it then affects the entire system. The old system was more dispersed in the sense that each site was a stand-alone site so if I had problems at my site it wasn’t affecting other people.”
Piacentino said the GRE was revised in order to address security issues, mostly in countries such as China, including Hong Kong and Taiwan and Korea. She said administrators found that students in those regions were sharing test questions and answers.
“What we want to do is eliminate the potential security risk that results from continuous testing,” she said.
The MCAT, which has been a paper test offered only twice a year, is moving to a computerized format, Espinoza said. When the test was on paper, it could be held in large lecture halls, but with the computerized format, fewer students can take the test at once, so it will now be offered 22 times between January and September.
Espinoza said that the change in format does not seem to affect test-takers.
“They’ve done pilots to address the issue,” he said. “Is a person’s performance negatively affected based on the format? They’ve determined that statistically there’s not a significant difference.”
The University is in the process of negotiating with Prometric, the company that provides the technical support and delivery network for the test, to be able to administer the test.
“Currently, students would not find us listed as a test site, but it’s our intention to make that happen,” he said.
The MCAT will also be shorter. The number of questions will be reduced by one-third and there will be 30 percent less time available to take the test; scores will also be reported in about half the time, according to the Web site for the Association of American Medical Colleges.
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