Taking That Giant Step

(CBS)  A graduate degree promises an enlightened mind and greater earning power at the cost of innumerable greenbacks and some stressful years buried in books — not to mention the fact that, whatever the prestige of the institution, going back to college still has eerie hallmarks of the day you walked into first grade. The stories and lists that follow are designed to help you on your journey, but there's one thing you should know: The path to a bright future may, indeed, wind back to the ivory tower, but that road will become a bit steeper this fall.

The GRE General Test, the bane of many applicants, is about to get more challenging. A much-delayed revamp debuts in September with changes designed to make it more relevant-at least according to Educational Testing Service, the people who dreamed it up. The new exam will clock in at over four hours, up from 2 1/2. There will be more critical reading questions in the verbal section and more interpolation questions in quantitative reasoning, and, like the SAT, the GRE will jettison analogies.

One thing is certain: Scores will plummet. From 1600 possible points (plus a score of 0-6 for analytical writing), the new test tops out at 240 (the writing score remains unchanged). Most important, the computerized test will no longer alter the question pool along the way according to the test taker's performance. Everyone will face the same set of questions.

Like the SAT writing test, the longer GRE will take some getting used to. Schools will need a few years to figure out how well the new GRE predicts student success at their institution. That's not to say the scores won't matter, but it probably means that admissions officers will be looking harder at other areas of your applications. As deans of admissions love to say, grad school candidates are considered holistically.

By Alex Kingsbury