ETS raised the price!

[RedPotato]

FYI, as of January 1st ETS has increased the fee to send score reports from $20.00 to $23.00.

I can spend an extra three dollars, but I am livid at the audacity of these people. Note that the website STILL says $20. and when I called to send the score (and question which price was correct), the person who answered replied, "we haven't gotten around to changing the website yet." Ugh - this better be worth it.

[jlee306]

I can't believe that. I tell ya, all the GRE/ETS is is just one BIG SCAM!!!!!!!!!!

[Victorianna]

What a waste of time, effort, and funds...

[DJLamar]

Of course they raised the price arbitrarily -- no one has any alternative to paying the $23. If you're applying to a graduate program, you have no choice but to take their test. The GRE is idiotic in my opinion, especially when some of the best programs in some areas openly admit that there's no real use for your scores (for example, University of Illinois and MIT don't require the GRE at all for application to their CS/EECS programs).

[coffeeandtoast]

I can't believe that. I tell ya, all the GRE/ETS is is just one BIG SCAM!!!!!!!!!!

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[JerryLandis]

Even the $20 was a scam considering how crappy ETS seems to be at sending things in the mail in a timely manner. How much does a stamp cost these days, 44 cents? Shouldn't have to cost them much more than that. It's not like they have to write the scores out by hand or anything.

[curufinwe]

Seriously, it is not like there is competition with this exam and sending out scores to pull the prices down. Isn't there like a board that regulates competition in the market? Isn't this monopoly?

[coffeeandtoast]

YES, YES, YES to curufinwe and Jerry!! Yes, as in I feel the same way! They are SUCH a monopoly. It's a complete scam. Potential grad students should not have to pay this much money on top of applications. With my husband applying last year, we spent over $2000 between applications and GREs. He applied to over 20 schools, so we gave the GRE at least between $400 and $600 (test + sending test scores). That is not counting the $450 I wasted on them this past December in less than 3 days trying to take the darn exam!!!

Do you guys want to start a website campaign against the ETS, GRE and list some of the things already included on this website?

[curufinwe]

I'd rather do it the American way... go to a lawyer, see if we got a case and sue the cra* out of them!

[Deleted]

Even the $20 was a scam considering how crappy ETS seems to be at sending things in the mail in a timely manner. How much does a stamp cost these days, 44 cents? Shouldn't have to cost them much more than that. It's not like they have to write the scores out by hand or anything.

Especially given that they send a CD every 5 days or so to each school with the data of tens or hundreds of applicants each time. It is a total scam.

I took the TOEFL on October 2007, unfortunately for me they keep the scores 2 years exactly, so when I tried to have them sent in November it was too late, the scores were no longer in their database. I had to retake the test...

[electricfan]

I'd rather do it the American way... go to a lawyer, see if we got a case and sue the cra* out of them!

I'd go for that, they overcharged my credit card $140 to send scores. I was on the phone for hours with customer service and they said they didn't have record of it. My bank fixed it, but then ETS sent me a bill for the money I never owed in the first place.

[Kinkster]

ETS is a big headache. I can't believe they raised the price to prey on people, especially given the economic situation.

[JerryLandis]

Cost effective my ass. It simply does not cost them anywhere near that much to send test scores. The most obvious example of the company ripping people off is the way that they deliberately send out scores as late as they possibly can, in order to get people to pay to hear their results over the phone for $12. Any fee for that is slightly ridiculous, but $12 to hear the score of a test you have paid to take, and whose results are available but not yet sent, is ridiculous and is clearly done solely for profit. I wouldn't really mind the test being monopoly controlled if they weren't getting away with ripping off thousands of people every year for the sake of a test that most admissions committees seem to consider almost useless.

If scores from different standardized tests that test English language/reading skills and aptitude can't be compared, that's because they don't really do a very good job of measuring those skills in the first place.

[Sparky]

Cost effective my ass. It simply does not cost them anywhere near that much to send test scores. The most obvious example of the company ripping people off is the way that they deliberately send out scores as late as they possibly can, in order to get people to pay to hear their results over the phone for $12. Any fee for that is slightly ridiculous, but $12 to hear the score of a test you have paid to take, and whose results are available but not yet sent, is ridiculous and is clearly done solely for profit. I wouldn't really mind the test being monopoly controlled if they weren't getting away with ripping off thousands of people every year for the sake of a test that most admissions committees seem to consider almost useless.

If scores from different standardized tests that test English language/reading skills and aptitude can't be compared, that's because they don't really do a very good job of measuring those skills in the first place.

Worse: you're paying $12 to hear one-third of the results of the test. If you take the computerized version, you get your verbal and quant scores right away.

I bet pretty soon they'll offer the option to see your verbal and quant scores on the day of the test for an extra $12...each.

[Roll Right]

Ever wonder why you only have one, maybe two, cable companies in your area? Where I live, cable is dominated by Comcast, and Verizon and DISH (Satellite) act as minority competitors. The fact is that it is not cost effective for multiple cable companies to compete with one another because the entry and exit costs to the industry are extremely high. Does it necessarily make sense for many of these companies to try and lay thousands of miles of competing cable lines on top of each other and drive down pricing to perfectly competitive levels? No, not at all. The high costs of maintenance of these complex infrastructures makes doing so neither beneficial to consumers nor suppliers. The result is, yes, monopolistic pricing structures, but that is the cost of the privatization of these types of industries. Utilities have the EXACT same type of structure as cable companies (high entry/exit costs), but they are state-sponsored. If utilities were completely privatized, you would almost certainly be paying a much higher price than you are now.

The structure of the testing industry is analagous to something like the cable industry . It makes no sense to introduce many choices in graduate testing because it would be incredibly inefficient to do so. There are incredibly high barriers to entering the testing industry, including the obvious need to convince universities, students, test prep agencies, etc., to accept an unproven test as an acceptable substitute for the GRE. Admissions committees would also have a much harder time comparing results from different tests. Plus, the introduction of a new competitor to the GRE wouldn't even guarantee competitive pricing. Like many industries with a small number of competitors, there is a high chance of tacit collusion in determining pricing. That is, firms are most likely going to try to maintain monopolistic pricing and additional savings to the consumer would be ambiguous at best.

The idea that we live in a perfectly competitive free market society devoid of monopolies is simply untrue. Comcast is certainly a monopoly in my area and many others. Intel essentially has a monopoly on semiconductors. Similarly, the ETS has a monopoly on graduate admissions testing. Utilities would have monopolistic pricing, but municipalities controls pricing so we don't pay as much as we would otherwise. The lesson here? The free market is not going to clamp down on the ETS's monopoly because basic economics of high entry/ high cost industries gets in the way of making this industry more competitive. That's life.

LOL, I swear this guy is a ETS representative. This is just a gripe session! It doesnt need justification!!!!!!

[coyabean]

I am in favor of some grassroots organizing against ETS. My issue is the financial threshold for obtaining higher education. Their waiver is bull crap -- at my school I couldn't get it because I was one credit hour shy of some arbitrary minimum -- and even if the test is free or reduced the score reports add up AND you have very little opportunity to have consumer grievances addressed.

And if it would make the guy above feel any better I'm also prepared to join ranks against cable company monopolies, too!

[electricfan]

$150 for a test is a far cry from the years of tuition, living costs, interest on student debt, deferred wages, etc etc you are going to spend (or lose) in grad school.

PLUS consider that the GMAT costs $250

The MCAT is $210

The LSAT costs $132, but you only get one score report and you have to register for the LSDAS to apply to most schools, which costs $121 and only includes one other score report.

Believe me, "generic" grad school applicants spend MUCH LESS than any MBA, Law, or Medical school applicant, which not only have higher costs in terms of standardized test fees, but generally higher application costs as well.

Again, if you treat grad school as a "sunk cost" and intend to pursue some irrelevant degree with questionable job opportunities, then I guess I can see why you might worry about paying $150 for a test. But most people need to look at grad school as an investment in their futures that will (hopefully) lead to an increase in expected future earnings and justify the initial investment in all related expenses associated with grad school.

Not a single thing in your post is relevant to the problem. I don't care what the GMAT cost, I'm not taking it. I don't care what MBAs spend, I'm not perusing one. If you think $150 is so insignificant, why don't you step up and offer to pay the fee for some of the members here?

[newage2012]

And since when did being able to afford something mean that I should pay for something? I'm sure you could "afford" to give the homeless man you pass by everyday $10, but you probably don't.

This kid either flunk his civic education class in high school, a Republican, or his last name is Rockefeller.

This is exactly why the U.S. is in such a bad shape. Lack of social responsibility. The only developed country that does not have government health care for all. Even China has national health care!

This kid needs to spend some years in the Gulag.

Edited February 10, 2010 by newage2012

[JerryLandis]

The difference between the GRE and cable is that cable TV performs a function. People choose to pay for it because they want to watch cable TV. People choose to take the GRE because without it you can't apply to graduate school, even though many departments admit that they don't really care what your GRE score is. I don't really care that ETS has a monopoly on standardized tests, I care that I have to pay to take a completely unnecessary test, and that the company that offers the test gets away with shamelessly ripping me off. So I'm getting ripped off for something I don't even want, something that serves absolutely no function.

The GMAT and LSAT are completely different from the GRE because they are actually used by admissions committees in business and law schools. No history department is going to accept or reject me based on my GRE score. They specify on their websites that they could care less. And yet, as a formality, I still have to pay to take the test, travel to the test center, and sit there for hours clicking on trivial answers.

[JerryLandis]

No, I am not blaming ETS for forcing universities to require the GRE. Obviously I'm annoyed that departments that state pretty clear disinterest in the GRE still require it as a formality in their application. My understanding is that this is generally a requirement of the Graduate School, but that the individual history departments often don't care. I don't blame ETS for that inconsideration on the part of those schools, but I do blame ETS for ripping me off. It does not cost them $20 or $23 or whatever to send scores to a department. It does not cost them $12 to give out a score over the phone. It does not take 6 weeks to send a score to someone in the mail (that's how long my scores took to arrive - clearly they waited as long as they could before sending them, in the hopes that I would buckle and fork out the $12). It also does not cost $50 to reschedule someone's test date when there are plenty of free computers open on another day, or even later that same afternoon. Sure, ripping me off is legal, but it's still wrong and I'm still perfectly entitled to be pissed off about it.

As far as engineering programs are concerned, I don't care because I do not study that subject. I study history, a field in which GRE scores are pretty much useless in determining a person's potential for success. I also don't care about the cable company, because I don't have cable, or even a TV for that matter. So no, they are not ripping me off. Fortunately I was given the choice not to buy into that. Unfortunately, I have no choice but to take the GRE in order to get into grad school.

Lastly, I understand that my only option is to suck it up and take the exam, even though it's a complete waste of time and energy. But it pisses me off that I have to pay for the privilege of wasting my time.

[JerryLandis]

Your comment was in direct response to what I said. If being reasonable about money and wanting to keep the ~$500 it cost me to take the GRE makes me self-absorbed, so be it. It's MY money and I would prefer if people wouldn't rip ME off. How horrid!

[JerryLandis]

I took the test once - the extra money was all for travel because I do not live in the United States, and the test is also more expensive outside the US. The application fees are annoying, but I understand that they are more or less necessary in order to pay those who work in admissions. I don't have student loans, and considering the economy and how hard it it is in general to get a decent paying job with a BA in history, I'd be grateful to receive the tiny stipend of a PhD student. That said, I am very fortunate not to be deep in debt right now. Which makes it all the more ridiculous that ETS preys on potential graduate students, because the people they are ripping off are likely to be dealing with the economic difficulties you listed above. I have no intentions of being rich, but that does not mean that I appreciate having to throw my money away on things like the GRE.

[JerryLandis]

Warned about what? I don't have any debt and never took out student loans.

[liszt85]

I took the test once - the extra money was all for travel because I do not live in the United States, and the test is also more expensive outside the US.

I come from India. The GRE and TOEFL (which you don't have to take) cost me around $170 each (my family makes a total of $5000 annually). About ETS being a monopoly: Lets assume you had 3 different companies that operated business.. the next excuse you'd find to support not wanting to take the test would be: Look at X! He had his test easy because he took it with company B whereas I took the more difficult A. So I prefer the ETS monopoly.

I find it hard to believe that non-native speakers go through all that effort, spend the money that they don't have (third world/ "developing" countries are where we come from) to get past this requirement because its about the only score that universities can use in certain decisions (eg: university wide fellowships.. you do need some kind of standardized score!). All I see here is native speakers ranting about how weird the english section of the GRE is. Granted its weird but I'm sure the people who designed it didn't do it in their sleep. I'm sure a lot of thought and research went into it. So get over it!

[JerryLandis]

You said it yourself mate, just because I can afford something (i.e. something utterly useless) doesn't mean I should naturally be expected to pay for it. I don't consider myself to be a helpless victim, but the fact remains I am being ripped off. TOEFL is completely different because it is entirely reasonable to want to make sure an applicant's English is okay before accepting him/her.