ETS Announces New General Education Test to Replace Academic Profile

PRINCETON, NJ -- Feb. 21, 2005 -- ETS announced today the development of a new general academic knowledge and skills test to succeed the Academic Profile. The new ETS general education assessment will be an enhanced version of the current Academic Profile test, which measures college-level reading, writing, critical thinking and mathematics in the context of the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences. The new test will be available in January 2006.


Higher education administrators and assessment directors will be able to equate scores from the new test with those from the current Academic Profile, allowing institutions to continue collecting data for longitudinal and cross-sectional studies without disruption. ETS will announce the new test’s name later this spring.

In December 2004, ETS and the College Board, shared owners of Academic Profile since 1987, announced that after June, they will no longer sell the Academic Profile. Institutions that plan to offer the Academic Profile test before the new version is released in January 2006 can purchase the current test until June 30, 2005. ETS will continue to score the current test for one year, until June 30, 2006.

"Colleges and universities have used the Academic Profile for nearly two decades to measure student achievement, evaluate program effectiveness, and benchmark performance" says Mari Pearlman, Senior Vice President of ETS’s Higher Education Division. "The new test will have enhancements that will allow for more flexibility and more informative results, while ensuring that institutions can equate data collected from the new test with that of the old"

The new test will include all features of Academic Profile but with such additional features and enhancements as Web and paper-and-pencil delivery and an optional essay module using e-rater(R), ETS’s automated essay scoring engine. The new test will be offered in two standard forms (two-hour test) and six abbreviated forms (40-minute test). The abbreviated forms will yield additional data for research and analysis, such as individual sub-scores and assessment indicators. The new test is structured so that additional modules may be added in the future. Like the Academic Profile, the new test will also support accreditation and the annual strategic planning process, student counseling, and performance-based funding.

For more information, college and testing administrators can visit www.ets.org/hea/acpro/successor.html or contact ETS at 1-800-745-0269 or highered@ets.org.

About ETS

ETS is a nonprofit institution with a long-held commitment to advance learning. The mission of ETS is to advance quality and equity in education by providing fair and valid assessments, research and related services for all people worldwide. In serving individuals, educational institutions and government agencies around the world, ETS customizes solutions to meet the need for teacher professional development products and services, classroom and end-of-course assessments, and research-based teaching and learning tools. Founded in 1947 and based in Princeton, New Jersey, ETS develops, administers and scores more than 24 million tests annually in more than 180 countries, at over 9,000 locations worldwide.

Contact Information

Tom Ewing

Media Contact

ETS, Princeton

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