Students planning to take the Graduate Record Examinations this fall no longer need to stress about the test changes Educational Testing Services announced and updated over the past four months.

The revised GRE, originally scheduled to launch this fall, will not be implemented until the fall of 2007, ETS announced last week.

The delay will give graduate schools and the more than 500,000 annual test-takers additional time to prepare for the new format, said Dawn Piacentino, associate director of the ETS higher education division.

Under the proposed alterations, the test would only be administered on computer, question formats would change and the GRE would increase in price from $115. A final price has not been decided.

The test would also be lengthened from two and one-half hours to four hours, and a new scoring scale would be created.

Last month ETS announced that the results of the first three administrations of the new test would be held for a time to finalize the limits of the scoring scale. This means students will have to wait longer for their scores to be sent to graduate schools.

Northwestern graduate school admissions officers aren’t concerned. The school already receives test scores after they are scheduled to receive them, said Beth Bogdewic, associate director of admissions and operations.

“ETS is awful about sending scores,” she said. “They say they’ll send GRE scores two weeks after they’re taken. We usually get them after four to six weeks. If they say they’re going to delay more, we may not feel it.”

The test is not the sole determinant of a student’s admission, Bogdewic said. The admissions staff examines a student’s grade point average, extracurriculars and research in addition to GRE scores.

ETS wants to ensure a “flawless transition” to the new exam, Piacentino said. ETS will have more than a year to examine the new test, but Piacentino said it will not be updated further.

“We decided to take a step back and learn from our experiences, figure out the complexities and apply those to launching the GRE,” she said. “We’re committed to a smooth transition.”

ETS has delayed changes before, said Liz Wands, national director of graduate programs at The Princeton Review.

“ETS has been announcing changes for at least eight years for the GRE,” she said. “ETS has never met a deadline they’ve set. We’re not surprised at all.”

ETS might have had problems finding facilities to accommodate the larger number of students taking the test on administration days, said Matt Fidler, GRE program manager for Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions. The revised test will be administered about 30 times per year. Currently the test is offered almost every day.

“Kaplan does a lot of practice tests each year, and based on the magnitude of this change, we understand the logistical hurdle,” Fidler said. “They’re not able to pull off the change in time.”

Wands said The Princeton Review thinks the changes have more to do with saving money than serving students.

“We find it hard to believe that these alterations are supposed to validate a student’s performance in school,” Wands said. “ETS only makes changes when their pocketbook is affected. A computer-adapted test is expensive (for students). This is financially motivated; (ETS will) be saving money in the long run.”

The Princeton Review called the untested question format “preposterous” and the delayed score release a “real disadvantage,” Wands said.

Compared with Kaplan, The Princeton Review traditionally has a “skeptical view of ETS,” she said.

“We’re outraged that students have to suffer because ETS is looking to save money in the long run,” Wands said. “The whole admissions cycle will be interrupted because people will not be getting scores as quickly.”

Kaplan and The Princeton Review were set to implement GRE preparation courses tailored to the new exam in the summer. Because the new exam’s administration will be pushed back one year, both companies will postpone their new courses until the next academic year.

Reach Margaret Matray at [email protected].