This is the VOA Special English Education Report.

For the past few weeks, we have been talking about some of the college entrance exams used in the United States. Well, we still have some more to talk about. A listener in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, Noel Kouadio N’Guessan, wants to know about the GRE -- the Graduate Record Examinations.

Many graduate programs in the United States require the GRE General Test. The exam takes almost four hours. And the cost to take it outside the United States is about 160 dollars.

The Graduate Record Examination measures verbal and mathematical reasoning. It also measures critical thinking and writing skills.

But the GRE is changing. The Educational Testing Service in Princeton, New Jersey, has redesigned it. The new version will be given starting in September of 2007.

The new GRE will continue to test the same areas as now. But Educational Testing Service officials say the new questions will better test the skills used in graduate school.

They say the redesigned exam will provide colleges with better information about students. And they say it will improve security and make better use of technology.

The GRE General Test will be administered on computer on about thirty test dates worldwide. And the number of Internet-based testing centers worldwide will be expanded. The exam is currently offered as either a computer test or a paper-and-pencil test.

There are also GRE tests in different subject areas.

Another entrance exam accepted by some American graduate schools is the Miller Analogies Test. The MAT measures knowledge of English and the ability to recognize relationships between ideas. It also tests knowledge of literature, history and science.

You can find links to more information about the MAT and the GRE on the Special English Web site, voaspecialenglish.com. You can also find the earlier reports in our Foreign Student Series.

Next week we will answer a question from Cambodia about the IELTS, the International English Language Testing System.

If you have a general question about studying in the United States, send it to special@voanews.com. We might be able to answer it on the air. So please be sure to include your full name and your country.

And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. I'm Bob Doughty.


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