Educational Testing Service (ETS) announced Tuesday that it has cast aside the sweeping changes to the Graduate Record Exam (GRE) set to take effect this September. The Princeton Township, New Jersey-based testing company along with Graduate Record Examination Board citied an inability to accommodate enough test-takers at its current testing facilities, among other reasons for the change of course. Nearly 600,000 students attempt the GRE annually. The new GRE, which would have dropped analogies, required more difficult mathematics skills and critical and analytical reasoning, would also have increased in length from the current 2 hours, 30 minutes to 4 hours. The time increase would have brought the test closer in line with other graduate school examinations, like the LSAT. The new test had been in development for over five years, according to ETS. A perfect score on the test would have changed to a 240. The test would also have changed from its current “adaptive model,” where test-takers receive different questions depending on previous correct or incorrect responses, to a “linear model,” where all test takers receive the same questions. The MCAT and the LSAT both feature “linear” testing models. The cost of taking the GRE could still increase despite any real changes to the test. Some estimate that ETS could raise the test as much as $30, to $160. Peabody’s Graduate Program in Education, recently ranked 3rd in the nation by U.S. News and World Report, boasts some of the highest GRE score averages among its peer schools. The GRE is also commonplace in the admissions process to graduate programs in the College of Arts and Science, among others. While the GRE is already a computerized test for most test-takers, the new examination would have only been offered about 30 times per year, according to ETS. Currently, Vanderbilt students and other test takers-have much more freedom when scheduling the GRE. These developments come at a rough time for testing companies. Last fall, the College Board was criticized when it incorrectly scored hundreds of SAT score sheets only to realize the problem months later, sending students scrambling and college admissions officers into a frenzied re-evaluation of some applicants. ETS had also been taken to task for releasing computerized versions of some of its tests, including the GRE, before all of the infrastructural and software issues were addressed. Sample questions for the new GRE had already been made available to students on the ETS website. Read more at www.ap.com and www.usnews.com