A student applying to PhD programs writes:
I am a keen follower of your blog and thought you might like to know a bit about the way ETS is currently treating applying graduate students. ETS now charges $160 each time a student takes the test, and $23 per score report sent to a school. Given the poor economic situation right now, many of us are applying to 15+ schools to give us a good chance of getting in. This means each of us is giving about $415 to ETS (or more, depending on whether one needs to retake the test) in order to get a good shot at a PhD program. Needless to say, this is quite burdensome for a group of people who are not particularly economically advantaged. I have spent about $2000 on application fees and ETS charges in order to give myself a good chance of getting into a PhD program. My yearly salary is $10,500.
All of this would be bad enough, but ETS has one other serious failing: their poor record-keeping means that some students receive a score report with only their most recent GRE score, while others receive their scores for the past five years. Out of my cohort of applying graduate students, only one of us was given his/her scores for the past five years. The rest of us received only the most recent (and higher!) scores. This means that admissions committees will only see my most recent score, giving me a notable (though small) leg-up in applying. While I doubt this would highly influence any admissions committee, ETS is still introducing some bias into the process.
Even aside from the questions about using GRE scores as a determinant of student success, ETS is overcharging us and doing a poor job at rendering the services for which we depend on them.
I admit I was in the dark about how high the fees were, but there is not, I fear, much leverage students or schools have with ETS. Have others had similar problems with ETS services?
