Andrew Szeri

Dear Graduate Students,

Nearly all of you have been touched by ETS and the GRE program.  ETS is the Educational Testing Service, the nonprofit organization that creates the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) General Test and other standardized tests.

Members of the GRE Board came to Berkeley February 3-5. These members are volunteers from graduate schools and higher education organizations throughout North America, as well as ETS staff. The Board’s winter meeting included a visit to our campus, with presentations to faculty and staff on research about fairness and predictive validity of GRE tests.

Having served on this Board for a couple of years (I’m now the 2010-11 GRE Chair), I’ve been impressed by the thought that goes into generating the GRE tests and the research sponsored by ETS on related issues. For example, through a partnership with the Council of Graduate Schools, ETS contributed to a ground-breaking, empirically-based research report on the future of graduate education.

Do you remember taking the GRE General Test? This August, prospective graduate students will take the GRE revised General Test instead. The new test is being revised to include new question types that better reflect the skills needed to succeed in graduate school and a new design that lets test takers edit answers and move forward or backward in a section. So, your college-bound younger sister or brother may well have a different experience with the test than you did! More information is here. The GRE Program now even has a Facebook page for prospective test takers.

I realize that since you have literally ‘been there and done that,’ for you these changes are (in that other sense of the word) academic. But it is my task in Graduate Division to stay aware of changes in the student experience, and to keep you apprised of those with some significance.  In this rare case, the news requires no work on your part, for which I’m glad, and you are probably relieved.

Best,

Andrew J. Szeri

Andrew J. Szeri
Dean of the Graduate Division