Educational Testing Service conducted focus groups on Monday and Tuesday at Norris University Center with graduate and undergraduate students to help develop a Web site for students interested in attending graduate school.

ETS, which administers the SAT and other standardized tests, hopes to create a Web site that will increase students’ access to graduate study, said Dr. Walter E. Jordan-Davis, director of the Fairness, Access, Multiculturalism and Equity Initiative for ETS. He conducted one of the focus groups.

ETS wants to create a “one-stop clearing-house for information and processes to help students gain access to graduate study,” Jordan-Davis said.

Jordan-Davis said the organization was researching the process of looking for a graduate school and which resources students have or intend to use in their searches.

ETS has already conducted similar studies at Howard University in Washington D.C., the University of Texas at Austin and the University of California at Los Angeles. At each university ETS conducted three sessions with about 10 students per session.

Jordan-Davis said these schools were chosen to participate in the research based on demographic and geographic factors. Each school is in a different part of the country and has a different student body composition.

NU represents a Midwestern school with a racially and ethnically diverse student body, he said.

All of the schools that participated in the research also had administrations that expressed interest in learning more about students’ access to graduate school.

Jordan-Davis said ETS is trying to better serve the needs of the post-secondary education community. He emphasized that meeting with students to learn more about their needs is common.

In July the organization will complete its analysis of the data it collects, but ETS officials have not set a date for the Web site to go online. Jordan-Davis said the organization needs to raise addtional funds before the site can be created.

Focus group participant Chris Greer, a Weinberg junior who said he plans to go to graduate school, said the Web site was an “interesting concept.”

Greer said the Web site would be more helpful to people just beginning their graduate school search than it would be to people who were advanced in their search.

“If it comes together it’ll be a nice resource,” he said.