ADMISSION TESTS What You Need To Study Abroad
By Kanika Tandon
The first hurdle to be crossed to get into your dream university abroad is an admission test. With the tough competition and the upping of standards by the institutions abroad, tests such as GRE, GMAT, TOEFL and IELTS (to name a few), have become the most coveted, and sometimes even the most dreaded, tests for prospective international students.
GRE
As many as 700,000 aspirants sit for the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) annually and almost all graduate courses and business schools accept a GRE score for admission. The test examines your analytical writing, verbal reasoning and quantitative reasoning. The current GRE General Test will be replaced by the GRE revised General Test, effective from August 1, 2011. The new test will contain new type of questions in Verbal Reasoning and Quantitative Reasoning, with questions that will expect you to react to ‘real-life scenarios’. The new test will allow you to move back and forth and change answers within a section as well as have a new on-screen calculator. It will be 4 hours long and will give no partial credit to examinees. “You have to nail the content just right,” says Lee Weiss, director of graduate programs, Kaplan Test Prep.
David G. Payne, Vice President and COO of Graduate and College Programs at ETS, advises students to make full use of the free official test prep tools available at the ETS’ official website. “We offer POWERPREP® II Software: Preparation for the computer-based GRE revised General Test. We also provide sample questions from the revised test, incorporating the new question and answer types.”
Many candidates about to appear for this admission test are high achievers and sometimes tend to take the tests lightly. Weiss says, “An average score of 600 in GRE requires a minimum 100 hours of preparation. However, the brilliant candidates often underestimate it. This is not a test to cram for; it requires consistent study—not 8 hours a day but one and a half hours a day for 2-3 months at least.”
Weiss also advises students to get used to the computer-based format of the test. “Practicing on the computer, and regularly, will build endurance and give confidence,” advises Weiss.
GMAT
About 200,000-300,000 candidates bound for business school appear for a GMAT every year. Weiss advises that unless one is sure of doing a management course, one should not take the GMAT, even if the scores are valid for five years. Weiss says, “Our surveys have revealed that like GRE, the GMAT score is the most important part of the application and it should not be taken lightly”.
Raghav Sharma, 26, due to attend Nanyang Business School, Singapore, feels that the key is not to, “get overawed or fall for the hype around GMAT”. He also
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