Applying to US Universities

International students are at a high risk due to two factors:
1. There are cultural differences they take time to adjust to - for example, date of birth is very private information in the US, and someone who knows your date of birth can steal your identity. But in some parts of the world it is so public information that students and job seekers write their date of birth on their resume! Bottom-line, stop mentioning your date of birth, except in the required field in the application. Don’t write your date of birth on your resume or other application documents.
2. Despite being very familiar with the internet, most international students have limited experience with shopping online and using a credit card over the internet.

No matter how much precautions are taken, anyone’s identity can be stolen. In the recent past, many mass identity thefts have taken place by hacking into servers of U.S. universities. Thieves have allegedly stolen record of millions of students, including of those who applied to that university, but did not even enroll. The only thing you can do is to monitor your credit file periodically (say once every six months) and take appropriate action if your identity is stolen. For example, your credit report may show a credit card you opened last month, which you are sure you did not open. You must contact that credit card provider and explain the facts to them. Universities or other large entities whose servers are compromised usually do a good job of informing all people whose data was stolen or is suspected to have been stolen, but beyond that it is the responsibility of the individual.

We highly recommend accessing your credit report and credit scores within the first six months of getting your social security number. In rare circumstances, you might be allocated a social security number which is already being used by a identity thief. If the contents of this post appear complicated and you have a question, you can ask in the “Travel, Money Matters and Insurance” section at the app2us.com forums. If you find our blog posts useful please be sure to spread the word to your friends.

New Verbal question includes a short text with two or three numbered blanks, each blank indicating that something has been omitted. You are asked to fill all the blanks in the way that best completes the text. You can find more details here .

Questions of this type ask you to enter your answer either as a number in a single answer box or as a fraction in two separate boxes — one for the numerator and one for the denominator - using the computer mouse and keyboard. The trickiest part in this type is to make sure you pay attention to the rounding off. If you calculate the answer correctly as 9.38 and the answer is expected to be rounded to one decimal place, only 9.4 will be treated as the correct answer. You can find more details here .

In another significant change, the Reading Comprehension questions have traditionally contained line numbers that reference specific parts of the passages. Those line numbers are being replaced with highlighting when necessary in order to focus the test taker on specific information in the passage.

Reference: This article is based on the official ETS announcement which is publicly available on their website.