New GRE test: A positive change.

What are the peak test-taking months for the GRE test?

The peak test-taking months are the fall months – September to November – each year.

What are the main changes in the new GRE pattern?

Less reliance on vocabulary that is out of context and emphasis on reading; no antonym and analogies and new types of questions in the Verbal Reasoning (VR) and Quantitative Reasoning (QR) sections ; the ability to edit or change answers, skip questions and go back within a section, and the introduction of on-screen calculator have been the main changes.

What were the reasons for this change and how will it help test-takers ?

When we analysed what students do in schools, we realised that they do less of synonyms and vocabulary-intensive work and more of reading comprehension. Hence, we added question types that represent what students encounter in academic life, both, in graduate and business schools and beyond that, in their workplaces. We dropped the single item vocabulary questions like antonym and analogies in the VR section and increased readingcomprehension type of questions. For the QR section, we increased data interpretation type of questions and introduced realworld problem-solving types of questions.

You have changed the scoring pattern too. Why?

This is a major change brought about for score users – business schools and graduate schools who judge proficiency of candidates based on their scores. The scale that we had earlier for VR and QR had 10-point increments. We realised that often they would misinterpret small differences between scores as large differences. For example, a candidate who has secured 620 in VR vis-a-vis a candidate who has secured 600, is actually ahead only by two score/ scale points, while the score users might misinterpret it as a 20 point difference. In the revised scale, it is a one-point increment. This will help minimise misinterpretation by score users.

Source : TOI