Mainland GRE test takers show strong global performance

People visit the booth of ETS (Education Testing Service) to get information about TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) and GRE (Graduate Record Examination) during the China International Education Exhibition Tour 2014 in Beijing, China, 25 October 2014. [File Photo: IC]

A new report from the Educational Testing Service shows that test takers from the Chinese mainland outperform their global peers on the GRE test for Quantitative Reasoning, according to reports by Beijing News and Tencent. 

China's test takers scored an average of 164.7 during the 2016-17 testing year, compared to the global average of 153.2. But they lagged behind the global average on the Verbal Reasoning and Analytical Writing tests.

The report says that a total of 58,678 test takers from the mainland sat the exams in the last testing year, a figure surpassed only by the number of participants from the United States and India. 

Physical sciences and business remain the most popular fields of study for prospective graduate students from the Chinese mainland. There has been an increase in the number of test takers aiming to apply for these majors, according to the report. 

The GRE, or Graduate Record Examinations, are a series of standardized tests used for graduate school entry in the United States, where Education Testing Service is based.