An American agency has said it will stop administering the computer version of the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea from October 1 because of cheating.
However, applicants would be allowed to take the GRE paper version on November 23 and March 15 next year, said the Princeton-based Education Testing Service (ETS).
A Hong Kong Examination Authority spokeswoman said yesterday applicants scheduled to sit for the GRE computer version could do so before October 1. They can also seek a refund or postponement.
The GRE is taken annually by more than 400,000 applicants to US graduate programmes in the arts, humanities, sciences and engineering.
The ETS said it suspended the tests in China because it found that a number of Chinese-language Web sites were offering answers to past questions illegally obtained by test takers.
The year-long investigation also found that verbal scores in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea shot up as much as 100 points on average. Test officials attributed the rise to the Web sites, which were written in Chinese and Korean.
'The Web sites are located in China and Korea, and easily accessed in Hong Kong and Taiwan,' the ETS said.