To some educators and students, the Graduate Record Examination is a time-proven, highly scientific assessment tool that accurately determines a college student’s ability to continue on to graduate school.
To other educators and students, the GRE is a biased, uneven way of gauging a potential graduate student’s skills, and it is utilized by schools only because it has been around for decades. The test’s critics consider it a waste of time and money.
Both groups could be right, experts said.
Since a computer version of the test was launched four years ago, there has been growing controversy over the GRE, which is prepared, written and administered by the Princeton, N.J.-based Educational Testing Service, a nonprofit institution.
“A lot of graduate program directors in recent years indicate that they really don’t care about the GRE,” said Randall Honold, coordinator of graduate student services for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at DePaul University, Chicago.
“It’s a little bit of a tradition that may be justified in certain disciplines, but as an overall admission criteria, I think it needs to be looked at critically,” he said. “I’m not sure if it necessarily reflects the skills and abilities that are necessary for a lot of graduate programs nowadays.”
“The GRE is ludicrous to a certain degree,” said Joseph Reddy, director of GRE development for the Princeton Review, a test-preparation firm that makes GRE tutoring available in classes, books and on computer software.
“In my experience, students for the most part do not think highly of standardized tests in general, especially tests that cost a great deal of money and, in theory, carry a great deal of weight, such as the GRE.”
Students agreed.
“I believe there ought to be some sort of test to qualify students because you need to know their abilities,” said Naperville resident Juliana Scholz, who in May received a master’s degree in clinical psychology from Wheaton College. “But I don’t think there’s a lot of benefit to taking the GRE.”
In April, Scholz took a GRE subject test in psychology because she hopes to pursue a doctorate.
Her biggest complaint about the test is that it focuses too much on physiology, as it relates to psychology. “That’s not relevant to me as far as my role in clinical psychology (is concerned),” she said.
“I see the GRE as a measuring tool to keep people out of graduate school more so than to admit people,” said Ronald Ward, who last month started as a graduate student majoring in history and political science in DePaul’s master’s program. Ward, who took the GRE a year ago, received a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Illinois at Chicago in May.
“Although I don’t know of another way to do it, I don’t think the GRE is a fair way to rank people,” he said. “For example, I particularly didn’t think the verbal section of the test was fair. You’re tested on a large section of words not used even in academics. To judge someone (on) their knowledge of arcane words is ridiculous.”
Critics said their biggest complaint is that the rules surrounding the GRE are ambiguous, at best.
For example, not all graduate schools or even departments of a college or a university require incoming students to take the GRE. Many that require the GRE don’t require achieving a certain score. Other schools pay attention to the scores of only a certain segment, such as math but not verbal or analytical, regardless of the student’s field of study.
At DePaul, only students planning to be biology, psychology or philosophy majors are required to take the GRE, said Honold, and scores are considered for admission.
“People in the department are looking at a score, but they’re looking at the score in light of other application materials,” such as grade-point averages and application essays, Honold said.
Students applying in communications, economics, public-services management and international studies can take the test in hopes of enhancing their application, but it is not required. The scores may or may not be considered for admission, Honold said.
Meanwhile, students planning to be chemistry, English, history, sociology or several other majors need not take the test.
Honold said there is a rationale as to why psychology majors need to take the GRE but chemistry majors can bypass it.
“Part of it has to do with program popularity,” he said. “Psychology programs all over the nation are very competitive programs, with application-to-admission ratios running between 20 and 25 to 1. So it’s one tool that departments can use to discriminate better candidates from poorer ones.”
Those who support the GRE said that it provides some sort of benchmark for educators and students. In addition, some graduate programs might use GRE scores to award grant or fellowship money to similarly qualified students.
“I guess my point of view would be more from a student’s perspective–the GRE gives them a very useful benchmark for themselves and let’s them know how they stack up against other applicants for graduate school in the U.S.,” said Kathleen Kelly, deputy director of academic affairs for the Illinois Board of Higher Education.
“The GRE might help them make a decision about which school to go to and whether they should spend the money to go to college,” Kelly said. “It might show them where they might need to strengthen their abilities or weaknesses.”
“The GRE is the only means of comparing a student’s performance that we have at this time,” said Mohammed Shahitehpour, professor of electrical engineering and dean of the Graduate College at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago.
“It may be a bad test, but if everyone is taking the same test, then we can compare scores,” he adds. “But if a student taking the test said, `This is way beyond me,’ then that’s a good indication that (he) doesn’t want to come here, waste money and find out after a semester or two that graduate study is not something for him.”
Reddy sees it in a different light.
“GRE test scores are an easy way for an admissions counselor to narrow a field of candidates,” he said. “For large programs that admit a lot of students or for really competitive programs, the GRE is a way of avoiding the necessity of weeding through lots of applications, so it is a valuable tool for an admission counselor.”
The GRE became popular as standardized tests began appearing after World War II. Those tests were developed to help categorize the huge number of college applicants taking advantage of the GI Bill.
From its development through 1992, the GRE was offered only several times a year as a paper-and-pencil test. Questions were changed each time to prevent cheating.
In 1992, the Educational Testing Service began offering the test on computer. On the computer test, if a student gets a correct answer on a question, his score goes up and he’s given a more difficult question. If he chooses the wrong answer, his score goes down and he receives a less difficult question.
Putting the test on-line also gave students more access to it, and now the GRE can be taken throughout the year.
The computer test also features instant scoring once completed versus the days or weeks it takes to compile the scores of the pencil-and-paper test.
Late in 1994 and early in 1995, the exam went off-line for a while when GRE testing service Kaplan Educational Centers discovered students could memorize enough questions to cheat on the test. As a result, the Educational Testing Service began changing the test more often.
Of more than 400,000 students who take the exam annually, a growing number of them are taking the test on-line. The Educational Testing Service is planning to phase out the paper test in 1999.
There are four sections to the standard GRE: a verbal test, a math test, an analytic test and an experimental section that is not used to determine a score.
In addition to the general test, there are 17 GRE subject tests, including biology, chemistry, computer science, engineering, French, mathematics, physics, psychology and Spanish. Only paper-and-pencil versions of the three-hour subject tests are available. Which tests are required varies with schools.
The computer test costs $96; the paper test costs $80.
Educational Testing Service officials are planning changes for the test in the next three years.
“We have recognized that this is a test that has been around for a long time and that things need to be changed,” said Judd Sheridan, executive director of the GRE program.
One change will be a new mathematics measure that will allow schools to better measure the math skills of math majors and non-math majors. In addition, the testing service plans to add a writing test.
“We believe with the changes, the test will be able to better provide information on students in a diagnostic sense,” Sheridan said. “The test results will not only say whether they will do well in grad school but where they’re strengths and weaknesses are.”
Proponents and critics of the GRE agree on one thing: The test will be around at least several years despite the debate.
“Admission counselors love this tool, and this is the most time-tested tool to streamline their jobs,” Reddy said. “I don’t think the GRE is likely to disappear soon.”
“I believe there’s always going to be a role for standardized testing,” Honold said, “and the GRE has been around for a while.”
“There are going to be lots of changes in education in the next few years and an increased reliance on tests to make academic and employment decisions,” Kelly said. “What’s driving that is technology that allows students to progress through instruction at their own rate versus spending time in the classroom. But in the end, you have to demonstrate that you’ve learned everything that you were expected to. And that’s where testing like the GRE comes in.”
