Students from smaller cities keen to study abroad

Updated on: Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Last year the number of Graduate Record Examination (GRE) has seen an 18 per cent increase in the country making India the highest growing market for the examination that helps Indian students get into universities across the United States.

David Payne, Vice-President and COO of Educational Testing Service (ETS) that conducts the GRE and TOEFL said that the numbers coming from smaller cities is growing in India indicating that students from smaller cities are showing keen interest to study abroad.

Speaking to The Hindu Education Plus during his Indian visit to assess the receptivity of the changes brought in the GRE test, Mr. Payne said the social media has in fact helped students from two-tier cities to understand the importance of the test while students from the bigger cities understood the changes effectively. Mr. Payne was surprised that the top six cities that use Facebook are from India, including Hyderabad. India is also the second largest group on Facebook after the United States.

The changes in the GRE, he says, are positively received by the students in India. The new format that came into existence from August 1 this year makes the test longer and is designed to provide graduate and business schools with more reliable results.

Indian students, he felt, were concentrating on memorising for high scores in vocabulary, but now the focus is more on reading skills. “It ultimately helps them as the universities are judging them based on these skills.”

Will the changes affect the scoring pattern?

Mr. Payne says they are collecting the data from test takes to study the scoring pattern. However, the new pattern will help the admission professionals to compare scores better. The new verbal reasoning and quantitative reasoning score scale will be in the range of 130-170, instead of 200-800. Scores will be reported in one-point increment rather than the 10-point increment.

It means candidates with larger differences will stand out clearly and comparison of candidates will be simpler.

With regard to the growing acceptance of GRE in place for GMAT for business school admissions, Mr. Payne said 650 business schools are already accepting GRE scores. Comparatively, the GRE is less expensive and more test-taker friendly. Moreover, candidates will have access to the evaluation tool for non-cognitive skills that business schools are now valuing.

Students from smaller cities keen to study abroad

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