The Web sites, based in China and Korea, included current and past questions from the graduate admissions exam that were illegally obtained by test takers, said Princeton-based ETS, which administers the test.
A yearlong investigation found average verbal scores in four countries -- China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea -- had risen significantly. Test officials attribute the rise to the Web sites, which were written in Chinese and Korean.
"We looked at score changes in 40 countries and noticed a significant rise in only these countries," said Carole Beere, the chairwoman of the GRE board.
The ETS would not reveal when the answers were posted on the Internet or when officials noticed scores increasing.
"Every year, we'd get someone from China who had high verbal scores on the GRE then had little or no knowledge of English when he got to the classroom," added Howard Lijestrand, graduate adviser at the University of Texas.
The investigation found a sharp increase only on the verbal part of the test, not the quantitative or analytical parts.
In the wake of the discovery, computer-based versions of the test will be suspended in those four countries. Only the paper version of the GRE General Test will be available on two dates set so far: Nov. 23, 2002, and March 15, 2003.
The change is expected to affect more than 55,000 students each year.
Bob Schaeffer of Fair Test, which monitors standardized testing, is pleased the computer-version test will be suspended but said it is only a matter of time before U.S. applicants find out about the sites. He noted that message boards are already spreading information about the GRE.
The GRE is taken annually by more than 400,000 applicants to graduate programs in the arts, humanities, sciences and engineering.
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