GRE rescheduled in 6 cities, no extra charge for students

Prometric to arrange for alternate testing. Affected students being informed by phone and e-mail.

On Tuesday morning, hundreds of GRE takers in the country found themselves caught in a difficult situation.

Most of these students who were scheduled to take the Graduate Record Examination, GRE, in January this year were informed by Prometric India (a subsidiary of Educational Testing Serice that monitors GRE internationally), that their exam dates were either rescheduled or cancelled.

While Prometric confirmed the news to Rediff.com over e-mail that the exam dates of over 500 students who were supposed to take the test in six centres namely Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Kolkata, Bangalore and Trivandrum were being rescheduled, they clarified that affected students are being contacted via phone and e-mail to work out alternate arrangements for the test without any extra cost to them.

While this was just part of a routine monitoring process by Prometric, students had little or no clarity as to why their exams were cancelled and whether they will be able to reapply on time.

Students who were unable to get through the customer support at the test centres were reassured with a standard message on their official GRE page on Facebook that read: ETS is working diligently with Prometric to address some recent scheduling issues in a limited number of cities across India. We anticipate having more details in the next 48 hours and appreciate your patience as we work through rescheduling test dates. We know your GRE test is very important to you and we apologise for any inconvenience this has caused.

Explaining the situation better, it said, "Because of the critical nature of what we're doing to protect the integrity of the testing process, Prometric constantly monitors our test centre network through a comprehensive approach that includes advanced safeguards such as biometrics, image capture and surveillance monitoring. Six test centres operated by Everonn Systems India Ltd, located in Ahmedabad, Chennai, Kolkata, Bangalore Mumbai and Trivandrum were closed as a result of this ongoing monitoring.

Affected students will be contacted individually by Prometric to arrange alternate testing through phone or e-mail.

It further said that GRE candidates who are scheduled to test in any of these six affected test centres should check their phone and email for any communication from Prometric to get a new test appointment.

Affected candidates are being contacted and offered a new test appointment based on availability.

Since appointment for a new test is subject to availability, candidates who prefer to test in January may be offered an appointment in a different city. At the same time, we would like to assure all affected candidates that we will do our best to accommodate their requests for preferred locations and dates," Prometric clarified in the e-mail.

It also stated that candidates who have registered themselves in other test centres should turn up for their test as scheduled.

Candidates who wish to schedule their GRE test may continue to do so through www.ets.org/gre.

Affected students who do not want to wait, can also choose from the three test centres that are currently available -- Gurgaon, Hyderabad and Allahabad.

"These students will not be charged any extra fee for rescheduling the test," Prometric told Rediff.com over the phone.

The Prometric e-mail said that it will add details of the new venues in Ahmedabad, Chennai, Kolkata, Bangalore Mumbai and Trivandrum to the registration and scheduling system as soon as they become available.

Everonn Systems that operates the test in these six centres remained unavailable for comment.

The Graduate Record Examination administered by Education Testing Service (ETS), is a multiple-choice entrance test that graduate schools in English speaking countries, (eg. United States, United Kingdom, where the medium of instruction is English) use for admission of students into their graduate programmes.