GRE General Test at Home: A Safe Testing Solution

With the dawn of the COVID-19 pandemic, students’ requirements globally changed, and to match up to those needs, ETS made it a priority to be agile, innovative, and accessible to students even in the most difficult of times by introducing the GRE® General Test At Home. A flexible and reliable solution, the GRE General Test At Home allows test takers to complete time-sensitive admissions applications by providing the GRE test in an identical format and on-screen experience as the test taken in a test center. The content and scoring of the assessment remain unchanged, allowing test takers to test from the comfort of their homes.

To ensure that tests students are taking from home meet the highest standards for validity, reliability, and security, the GRE General Test At Home employs multiple best-in-class security measures that use both real-time human monitoring and artificial intelligence and technology to see and respond to even the hardest-to-detect incidents.

Keeping unfair practices under check

Test takers have always attempted to gain an unfair advantage on standardized tests and the GRE is no exception. However, as ETS has introduced new delivery methods, specifically our at-home assessments, we continue to observe cheating attempts among test takers. As a result, ETS has and continues to employ a number of proven, traditional measures and tactics to prevent, catch and take action against those who attempt to cheat, and have added technology methods to assist proctors and new methods of post-administration analysis. At ETS we have - and will continue - to invalidate scores that we have identified as earned unfairly to preserve the integrity of our tests.

Severe punishments for malpractices

Not only does ETS complete a thorough analysis of each score prior to its official release, but should the organization also collect additional insights that contradict their initial analysis, they can (and do) cancel scores after they are officially reported to test takers and institutions. This is critical to maintaining the integrity of our assessments. We have and continue to invest in building a robust pipeline of new technology and processes to enhance our security practices. This pipeline is currently active with a number of projects in progress, including but not limited to using AI during test delivery, implementing new statistical tools, and additional ways to identify remote access software. 

ETS continually reviews and pivots their security methods and processes to ensure the integrity and validity of their assessments maintain the highest standards stakeholders expect, including educational institutes and students, as well as what those standards they have set for themselves.

About ETS

At ETS, we advance quality and equity in education for people worldwide by creating assessments based on rigorous research. ETS serves individuals, educational institutions and government agencies by providing customized solutions for teacher certification, English language learning, and elementary, secondary and postsecondary education, and by conducting education research, analysis and policy studies. Founded as a nonprofit in 1947, ETS develops, administers and scores more than 50 million tests annually - including the TOEFL® and TOEIC® tests, the GRE® tests and The Praxis Series® assessments - in more than 180 countries, at over 9,000 locations worldwide. www.ets.org.

About ETS India

ETS India, based in Delhi, India, is a subsidiary of ETS headquartered in Princeton, N.J., USA. ETS India is bringing the organization’s wide-ranging expertise in education and learning to test takers and learners throughout the region. The staff of ETS India offer deep expertise and insight into delivering high-quality learning and assessment solutions as well as new business opportunities to organizations, institutions and individuals in the country. www.ets.org.