Monday, December 08, 2008

GRE Trend

There's an article in insidehighered.com that says "The number of students taking the Graduate Record Examination will decline in 2008, the first time ever that the GRE has seen a fall in test-taking during an economic downturn."

I wondered what google trends would show about searches for GRE. See below.

Interestingly, the number of searches has been averaging less and less over the years, despite the article's assertion that this was the first year they'd seen a drop in actual tests. I wondered if the results have some bias, and tested that by asking for statistics on searches for toys.
Nope--this seems as regular as a heartbeat, with a spike every holiday season. Searches for 'graduate school' have trended down, while searchs for 'jobs' have trended up. Steak seems to be trending down a bit, while potatoes are perhaps on the rise. Try 'wedding' and 'divorce'--Atlanta seems to be hard on marriages.
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