GRE Disappointment

The New York Times reported last week that the new and improved GRE that was supposed to start this fall has been scrapped by ETS because it is “longer, more expensive, and more difficult to administer” than the current test. It sounds like they ran into big problems with ensuring access for test takers outside the US (who constitute 20% of GRE takers, a figure which surprised me) using an Internet-based system. The current GRE is available on a more or less constant basis, with administration by computer or by paper depending on the location, while the new test was going to be available on only 35 testing days. (They wanted to limit the days the test is available because of a scandal involving students in some Asian countries memorizing specific questions from the test they took and sharing them with others. By having a small number of test days, ETS could administer a completely different set of test questions each time and thus stymie cheaters.) Apparently ETS has delayed the deployment of the revised test twice before finally dropping it for good this time.

This is a bummer for me. I was really looking forward to the new test, with the increased emphasis on contextual language use, statistical reasoning, and critical thinking. Now I’m facing spending precious time looking at vocabulary lists to prepare for analogy questions like: "Apotheosis is to raven as ______ is to writing desk. (a) chicanery (b) encomium (c) iconoclast (d) panegyric."

And I suppose that the hated adaptive model that forces you to work each problem without skipping and does not guarantee you even the opportunity to see the harder problems on the test if you happen to be a slow starter and miss the first couple of questions is sticking around too. Grrr. Perhaps they will at some point be able to incorporate many of these content changes even having abandoned the plans to offer the test using the limited-day Internet-administration method.

I enjoyed this quote from a director at the Kaplan test prep company:

“We do think the new test would have been more challenging,” Ms. Kaplan said, adding that she welcomed the announcement. “It’s a positive thing that E.T.S. realized that the change would do more harm than good,” she said.

This is true if you assume that the sentence ends with “for my company, which completely relies on the ability of memorization and similar teaching-to-the-test techniques to increase test-takers’ scores. We’ve been freaking out for years now at the prospect of having to instruct people in how to think logically, understand and critique ideas, or do any kind of story-problem-based mathematical reasoning, and were depressed to consider that all our current books and software were about to become obsolete. I’m thrilled that logistical difficulties have thwarted the attempt to make a test with higher validity but that would ultimately have been a pain in the ass for me personally and a revenue blow to my organization in general.”

OK, I guess it might also be better for students from outside the US who may not have been able to secure the opportunity to be tested under the new system. (Like I needed the competition, right? At least my field of interest is only moderately quantitative.)

I can’t help but think how bitter the ETS psychometricians who have been working on this project for four years must be to see this thing die because the People’s Republic of Random Country doesn’t have a sufficiently developed infrastructure to support the testing system. Maybe Ms. Kaplan will send the project team a case of hard liquor and a “Sucks to be you!” sympathy card paid for out of the proceeds of the 100,000 extra test prep books on the old style GRE they will sell this year.