GRE® Repeaters Show Score Gains

-- New data: Most individuals who took the GRE® revised General Test a second time increased their scores

PRINCETON, New Jersey, June 4, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Since 2012, the number of people taking the GRE ® revised General Test a second time grew considerably, and a new analysis by Educational Testing Service (ETS) revealed that most people who took the test a second time did better. Score improvements were noted on the Verbal Reasoning measure and on the Quantitative Reasoning measure.

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"Performance differences, however, vary by individual and might occur for a variety of reasons including test-day jitters or how prepared he or she felt," said Dawn Piacentino, director of communication and services for the GRE Program at ETS. "Not everyone's score goes up, but in a study of the GRE test takers, on average, those who took it a second time increased their scores."

Some of the interest in testing a second time stems from the 2012 introduction of the ScoreSelect® option. With this option, individuals who take the GRE revised General Test to apply to graduate or business schools around the world can take the test more than once and can choose to report only their best sets of scores. That is an important benefit, according to a recent survey of GRE test takers. Furthermore, the survey showed that awareness of the ScoreSelect option has grown significantly in the last year, and nearly eight out of 10 test takers who responded said they thought the ScoreSelect option was valuable.

Students can take the GRE revised General Test once every 21 days up to five times within any continuous rolling 12-month period, but only a small percentage of test takers took the test more than twice.

"Many of the changes that we have introduced have been designed to bolster students' confidence so that more people will take that step toward graduate or business school," said David Payne, ETS Vice President & COO, Global Education. "That means that individuals can approach test day with a backup plan. If they feel they did their best right away, that's terrific, but about 20 percent of people in 2013 did try again. The ScoreSelect option enables a person to take it again and send schools only their best scores."

GRE scores currently are accepted by thousands of graduate-level schools worldwide including more than 1,100 business schools that now accept GRE scores for admission into their MBA programs.

For more information about the GRE revised General Test or to register to take a GRE test, please visit www.ets.org/gre. The analysis referred to above is available upon request; please contact Jason Baran at jbaran@ets.org.

About ETS
At ETS, we advance quality and equity in education for people worldwide by creating assessments based on rigorous research. ETS serves individuals, educational institutions and government agencies by providing customized solutions for teacher certification, English language learning, and elementary, secondary and postsecondary education, and by conducting education research, analysis and policy studies. Founded as a nonprofit in 1947, ETS develops, administers and scores more than 50 million tests annually — including the TOEFL® and TOEIC® tests, the GRE ® tests and The Praxis Series® assessments — in more than 180 countries, at over 9,000 locations worldwide. www.ets.org