New York, NY (Feb. 3) - In six months, aspiring graduate school and business school students will face a vastly different and more difficult GRE® – one that will be about an hour longer than the current exam. Beginning Aug. 1, the new GRE® will feature the following major changes:

• The current 200 to 800 point scoring scale, in ten-point increments, will be replaced by a scoring scale of 130 to 170 points, in one-point increments.

• The Quantitative section will include less geometry, but more data analysis. It will also introduce Numeric Entry questions, where test takers must provide an answer without having a selection of choices from which to choose.

• An on-screen calculator will be available for test takers, which will likely mean more complex math problems.

• The new GRE's® Verbal section won't include antonym and analogy questions, but will include in-context questions that test reasoning skills, in addition to vocabulary.

• The new GRE® will also contain a new "strengthen/weaken" reading comprehension question type, similar to those on the GMAT, the primary admissions exam for business schools.

• The current GRE® is adaptive at the question-level: answer a question correctly, and the next question is more difficult. The new GRE® will be adaptive at the section level: the better a test taker performs in one section, the more difficult the next section will be. This new format will also allow test takers to skip questions within a section and come back to them, a function not available on the current test.

It sounds like you won't be able to study for the new test!

sounds riveting

will you have to retake the GRE if you've already gotten a score on the previous one, but still haven't app'd to gra dschool?

I have no idea. I just searched for "new GRE" and found a press release about the upcoming exam. I'd imagine which exam they will accept will depend solely on the school.

However, I suspect that many previous test takers will be grandfathered in. Kind of like who they ask when you apply if you were born before a certain year or if you have taken the SAT before a certain date.

I decided to take the old exam in May. Dates in June and July were booked in my area. My understanding is that the new test results won't be sent until Nov even if you take it early in Aug, so there seems to be a rush of people trying to get the old exam. If you are willing to try, the new exam is half off for the first two months.