New GRE will take about half as much time, Educational Testing Service announces
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Starting in September, the time to take the Graduate Record Examinations will be less than two hours, which is about half its current length, according to a May 31 news release from the Educational Testing Service, which is responsible for the GRE and designs the exam.
In 2021, the council of the ABA’s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar voted in favor of allowing law schools to use the GRE as an admissions exam in addition to the Law School Admission Test.
For the GRE, changes include removing an argument analysis task in the writing section, reducing the number of questions in the quantitative and verbal reasoning section, and removing the exam’s unscored section, according to the news release.
Question types on the exam and score scales will remain the same, but the turnaround time for scores is expected to be shorter, according to the news release.
“As we continue to introduce product innovations, we’re committed to balancing two things—maintaining rigor and validity, while improving the test-taker experience,” said Amit Sevak, the CEO of the Educational Testing Service, in the news release.
Study plans for a shortened test should not change, according to Craig Harman, senior manager of content and curriculum for test prep company Kaplan’s GRE programs.
It’s the “same question types, same computer-adaptive format. Keep doing what you’re doing,” Harman said in an email to the ABA Journal.
See also:
ABAJournal.com: “Admissions test requirement for ABA-accredited law schools will remain in place for now”
