Effectiveness of GRE Workshops to Increase Awareness

Excelling on the Graduate Records Exam (GRE) can be an important milestone for students who wish to attend graduate school. As part of an NSF-STEM project, two GRE workshops were implemented to inform students about the importance of starting the preparation process earlier in their undergraduate career. The second workshop, occurring the year after the first, included minor modifications based on the feedback from responses from the first workshop. This paper examines the results of the two GRE workshops, and describes (1) the two workshops, (2) the survey used to evaluate the workshops, and (3) the results from the pre and post survey. The results indicated that 89% of participants agreed or strongly agreed that they were more prepared to take the GRE after attending the first workshop with an 11% increase in the level of awareness about the GRE from the pre and post survey. There were two major changes between the two workshops: (1) an increase in the advertisement to the students and (2) the Dean of Graduate School presented the opening information. The results from the second workshop indicated a 22% increase in the level of awareness about the GRE from the pre and post survey with 78% of the participants reporting that they agreed or strongly agreed to that they felt more prepared to take the GRE. The attendance from the two workshops was recorded by the number of survey responses collected, which increased from 36 to 51 (42% increase).

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