The cost of the GRE has gone up. I have no idea what I paid for it when I took it in 1994. I only remember coming out of the test session and feeling like maybe I should assume a prone position in the hallway and just pass out there. It was a tiresome, grueling test. Whatever I paid, the scores got me accepted to a doctoral program in linguistics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. For a variety of mostly personal reasons, I didn't actually enroll.

I'm sure I didn't pay anything close to that $115 the test cost last year. Fees for the test have doubled since it went from a paper and pencil test to a fully computerized assessment tool. This year it's up another twenty-five bucks - to $140. But as Scholarships.Com recently pointed out, you shouldn't expect that to be all you pay...




When I took the test a decade and a half ago, I sent my scores to six or seven schools: UNC obviously, Cornell, Indiana, Syracuse, and a couple of others. Now the first four are free; be prepared to cough up an extra $15 per school if you want your scores sent to more than four places, though. There's a $50 fee if you have to change test centers after you register. There's a $50 fee to reschedule tests under some circumstances. The Scholarships.Com article points out other hidden charges you may encounter.

The irony is that the GRE isn't much of a predictor of success in graduate school, according to at leasy one source...