Foreign Nationals Taking the Gre General Test During 1981–82: Selected Characteristics and Test Performance

ABSTRACT During the 1981–82 testing year, foreign nationals representing over 140 countries or territories made up approximately 17 percent of all GRE General Test takers. However, they were heavily concentrated in scientific‐technical fields–for example, almost one‐half of all examinees in engineering and one‐third of those in math‐science fields were foreign nationals. Most of these examinees were non‐native speakers of English for whom average scores on the verbal and analytical measures were considerably lower than those of native English speakers (both U.S. and foreign) in similar fields of study. However, the quantitative mean profile, by field, of foreign examinees did not vary according to English language background and was quite similar to that of U.S. examinees. Detailed comparative profiles of GRE performance data are provided for the general foreign and U.S. examinee populations, and for foreign examinees classified by country of citizenship. In addition, the study analyzes GRE performance of groups of foreign and U.S. examinees defined in terms of age, sex, reported English language communication status, intended graduate field, U.S. vs other undergraduate origin, repeater vs nonrepeater status, and other personal, academic, and testing‐related characteristics. Study findings suggest that GRE General Test data (especially verbal and analytical test data) generated by non‐U.S. citizens from non‐native English speaking societies should not be treated as comparable to test data for U.S. examinees or examinees from other native‐English speaking societies.