It is now common knowledge that GRE General Test has changed. Indians aspiring to study abroad feel ‘disheartened’ believing they have ‘missed the bus’. They are ‘unsure’ of what the change is going to be like. The news that – “Registrations for the old GRE have already been closed in India (excluding those that have already registered)” – has created panic, especially among the ones who were already half the way in their preparation for the present GRE (precisely Old GRE in India) and were not registered before the above news was made public.

What is worse, the aspirants now have to wait till 1st July, 2007 to register for the revised GRE General Test, till Sept. 2007 to take the test, and till Nov. 2007 to get the scores. The academic session they will now be able to apply for would be Spring 2008 (which ideally is NOT a good time) or Fall 2008.

A BRIEF DESCRIPTION

1. A New-Linear GRE in place of the Existing-Adaptive one in September 2007.
2. If you have taken the existing GRE and are worried of your old score becoming invalid after Sept 2007; do not worry, the Existing GRE score DOES NOT lose its validity. A concordance table will be available for those who have already taken old GRE.
3. The new GRE has become more reasoning oriented. Focus has been purposely shifted from Abstract Vocabulary to vocabulary in context.
4. The purpose is to take the mean verbal GRE scores up from a lowly 439/800 per the old format to 150/170 per the new format.
5. The GRE score will now be in 3 digits. The new sectional score will lie in the range between 130 and 170.
6. The score in the will increase with 1-point increments compared with 10-point increments of the existing format.
7. The new scores will valid for 5 years and a concordance table will be available to convert score from the old format to the new one.
8. The Analytical writing score scale did not change.
9. There are only three main question types in the new Verbal reasoning format:
   1. Sentence completion
   2. Reading Comprehension
   3. Critical Reasoning
10. The vocabulary used is much simpler, but the answer options are closer in meaning, requiring the examinee to understand the context before selecting the answer.
11. The relationship between words and ideas is more important than the dictionary meanings.
12. New question format requiring the examinee to decide whether one, two or all three answers are right.
13. New question format of role played by boldfaced statements.
14. Shorter RC passages.
15. In the Quant section the focus on Higher Geometry has been reduced and it is increased on real life problems, data interpretation and quantitative reasoning. Introduction of an online 4-function calculator with square root will help test takers minimize their time-wastage on computation and devote more time and attention on analysis.
16. AWA section is now Critical thinking and Analytical writing (CTAW). The name has been changed to make it more accurate and descriptive of what ever is expected from the test taker. Moreover, CTAW responses will available to the universities/institutes for appraisal vis-à-vis the strength of the applicant’s write-up in the SOP. This will certainly affect the students who were hitherto seeking professional help to make their SOP look impressive. They have now to make their CTAW equally impressive.
17. New GRE has become trickier due to the following reasons:
    1. Increased expectations on Verbal score.
    2. Increased expectations on CTAW score.
    3. Need to reduce the clustering near the top in respect of Quant score.
    4. New Question types e.g. where the test takers have to select one, two or all the options.