1. What are the main purposes of your visit to Beijing?

Mr Payne: We are reaching out to the Chinese market to make sure that everyone understands what is happening with the changes this year to the GRE General Test.

2. We know that you have been working for ETS for more than 7 years. Could you tell us your experience and role with ETS?

Mr Payne: I always respected ETS and the organization and the chance to be involved in higher education and improve higher education around the world. It’s a wonderful opportunity, so I am very happy at ETS. We have been working very closely with some graduate schools and business schools, in terms of what information they really need to make appropriate decisions for their applicants. ETS worked for about 10 years doing research about how to improve the way we evaluate skills.

3. What are GRE’s strategies to develop market in China?

Mr Payne: The strategy, first and foremost, is to be more familiar with the Chinese higher education system, and that’s something I am trying to do during this visit. Another strategy is to really listen to what the needs are of all the universities and students in China. We want to listen to the market needs and make sure that we can meet those needs. We also want to make sure that everyone can transition to the new test and that test-takers have access to the test when they want to take the test.

4. Could you share with us any statistics showing the achievement of GRE test in the market in China?

Mr Payne: I don’t have the number in front of me right now, but for the last five years it has steadily increased in China. And that reflects the fact that more and more Chinese students are interested in pursuing graduate education. Chinese students do extremely well on the GRE General Test. I know from talking with many university faculty members that Chinese students coming to graduate schools are very well prepared. In the US, there is an organization that always looks at how students progress in doctoral education. Their research showed that international students are succeeding in graduate education, in terms of completing the degree, at a higher rate than domestic students. International students can also complete their degrees in fewer years than US students. I think that it’s really a testament to the quality of the Chinese education system and the quality of students who are coming to the US.

5. GRE has been improving itself these years. Could you tell us the principle and objectives of its self-improvement?

Mr Payne: Yes, we really have three design goals in the mind. First is as I said that the GRE general test does an excellent job predicting the success in graduate education and business education. We are changing the questions that occur on the test and are trying to have those questions be a closer representation of the types of tasks that students can find everyday in their graduate education. Let me give you a concrete example. On the current test in the verbal reasoning section, we have two item types that really test people’s ability to reason but at the level of individual vocabulary words. While those question types really do measure verbal reasoning, never in graduate school will a student be confronted with antonyms or analogies. So we are dropping these question types on the revised test and what we were replacing them with is more reading comprehension questions because that’s what students will do in graduate education. Secondly, we really want to make the test as test-taker friendly as possible. There are several ways in which we are doing that and I think the students will really like these changes. The current test uses computer-adaptive testing methods that automatically change the difficulty of each question as the test taker proceeds with the exam, depending on the number of correct or incorrect answers given. So from an efficiency perspective, it works well, but from the test-taker perspective, it is an unusual format that the test-taker can only answer the question that is immediately in front of them. The new test will change based on how you respond to a series of questions. The new test will allow the student to skip around and change answers to certain questions. They go through the questions and look at the ones they can answer quickly. If they are unsure about a question they can mark the question and come back and review it later. That part of the testing experience will allow students to take all the strategies they develop in their educational career and use them in taking the test. We know from the research that students really like this change. Another new feature on the revised test is an on-screen calculator to assist students with the Quantitative Reasoning section. The scoring of the GRE revised General Test has also been changed from a 200 to 800 scale based on 10-point increments to a 130 to 170 scale based on one-point increments.

6. We know that ETS has done a lot of things to help non-English speaking students to improve their ways of learning English. What kind of roles does GRE play in realizing this goal?

Mr Payne: There is a very interesting aspect of the new test that I think could contribute directly to Chinese students’ acquisition of English language skills. We know right now Chinese test takers are very smart and they prepare appropriately for the test. Hundreds of students from China tell me their stories of memorizing lots of vocabulary words. That’s a very good strategy in terms of getting good scores. But that’s not a good strategy in terms of developing skills you need in graduate school. So if you spend a lot of time memorizing the vocabulary, you are not spending that time learning how to read difficult passages. The new item types that we have on the GRE revised General Test will directly help students in terms of graduate education. It will really help students in terms of language proficiency and will really help them to develop their skills.