2009 turned out to be a very good year for the GRE – record breaking in fact. Not only did overall test volumes rise by 1 percent, but [info:'gre-registration' exam registrations] lept by over 9 (that’s over 675,000 people!), and in the biggest news of all, the number of business schools accepting GRE scores from applicants to MBA programs increased 68 percent.
“Clearly students across the globe are seeing the value of taking the GRE General Test to pursue a graduate degree or business degree like an MBA,” said David Payne, VP and COO for College and Graduate Programs at ETS. Furthermore, “MBA programs are telling us that they need to broaden and diversify their applicant pools to meet the demands of today’s global economy. And they see accepting GRE General Test scores as a great way to reach hundreds of thousands of potential candidates that they could miss if they accepted only the GMAT scores,” he continued.
Payne also expects to see further growth for the GRE over the coming years. Partially attributed to the continuging global economic crisis that has adults returning to graduate schools in droves, either seeking an edge in an increasing competitive job market, or simply to [blog:'dont-graduate-during-the-recession-study-for-the-gre-now' delay graduating in a recession]; but also due to the fact that ets will soon begin launching the GRE Revised General Test. The Revised GRE, according to ETS, will offer a more user friendly test structure, along with changes to question types, and the elimination of some question types all together.
But remember, just because the number of test takers and applicants to post graduate programs is on the rise does not mean that seats in those programs are, meaning competition for these elite spaces will become even tougher. Better get back to [subject:'gre' studying]!
Read the full article: Everybody’s Writing The GRE