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Members and Friends 10 Membership Information 11 Programs, Services, and Awards 12 Resources for Students Hot Topics 13 Site Search 14 Members Only 15 Home Hot Topics Changes to the GRE Test: An interview with GRE Board Chair, Dr. Thach Why did the GRE Board make the decision to change the content of the General test-to add the analytical writing measure and to drop the analytical reasoning test? There were several reasons for changing to the writing measure. It covers skills that are essential to succeeding in graduate school, and the evaluation of these skills was not included in the analytical reasoning test. GRE has developed a measure of writing abilities in response to many requests from the graduate community to assess this skill. Secondly, the writing test isn't highly speeded - test takers have sufficient time to take the test. In contrast, the analytical reasoning is highly speeded. I believe the writing measure is a fairer test because of that advantage, people who work more slowly aren't disadvantaged on the writing test as they might be on the analytical reasoning test. It covers skills that are essential for graduate school and are not otherwise tested in the GRE. The specific abilities that are tested ask the test taker in one part to present an argument and defend his/her perspective on a particular issue. The second part asks the test taker to analyze an argument that another person has presented. These two abilities are valuable to a graduate education. What is the GRE Board's advice to those departments and programs that have been relying heavily on the analytical measure to assess applicants? They should pay more attention to the components of the test. The skill sets on the verbal and quantitative parts overlap with the analytical reasoning skill set. Students who do well in the verbal and quantitative areas do well in the analytical reasoning section. GRE data indicate that the verbal and quantitative measures predict success in graduate school almost as well as do these two measures plus analytical reasoning. How will the graduate community and the GRE Board know if this change has been successful? First--GRE expects to have fewer anomalous results that require retests. Almost two years ago it became apparent that anomalous results were occurring at a one percent rate. There was a retest option that was offered and it was primarily the analytical reasoning test that was causing the problem. I also expect the writing measure will increase accuracy. Also, over the longer term, we expect the predictive ability of the GRE to determine a test taker's performance in graduate school to be better than it has been. The relationship between the results with students' performance in graduate school will be better because the writing measure is testing skills that are important in succeeding in graduate school. Since this is a writing test rather than the standard multiple-choice test that we are familiar with, could you describe the scoring process; GRE is using a six-point holistic scale to score the analytical writing measure. Two readers, who are highly trained and will know what to look for, will read and score every test. Scores from both readers must be within one point of each other; We've conducted studies that suggest that the fairness of this system is high. In fact, group differences are considerably less on writing than on the analytical reasoning test. We see more homogeneity across the board from all groups. Anything else our graduate deans should know about the GRE test change? They should know that a great deal of study has gone into this, and it was the computerization of this test a few years ago that allowed for this change to be made. Computer-based testing allows us to analyze the test better--in a way that is far more accurate and has far more information than what used to be available in the paper version. Thach is Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Washington University and Professor of Biology and of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics. Prior to becoming Dean of the Graduate School, he was Chair of the University's Department of Biology (1977-81), Coordinator of the Program for Special Major in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (1983-1993), Director of the Graduate Program in Molecular Biology (1974-77) and Director of the Center for Basic Cancer Research (1972-77). He is a member of the American Society of Biological Chemists and the American Society for Virology, and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He served on the editorial boards of Archives of Biochemistry (1972-78), Journal of Biological Chemistry (1984-1989) and as Guest Editor of Enzyme (1990-91). Thach has received major grants from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and Monsanto for over 30 years. He has published over 90 articles on the regulation of protein synthesis in research journals, including Nature, Science, Cell, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Thach is currently a member of a number of national and regional committees, including the Association of Graduate Schools' Executive Committee, Emory University's Graduate School Advisory Council, and the Graduate Record Examination Board, of which he is Chair. He has recently completed a three-year term on the Council of Graduate Schools' Board.
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