CHICAGO -- This is usually a high-anxiety season for college seniors, what with deadlines looming for getting applications to graduate school in order.
But this Christmas break, many students left campus with a double dose of jitters, trapped in the middle of a multiple-choice espionage drama.
Two years ago, the Graduate Record Examination, which is generally required of candidates for graduate programs, entered the electronic age.
Instead of using the traditional pencil-and-paper format, students were able to take the GRE by computer, an innovation touted as being more accurate and less vulnerable to cheaters.
But last week, the Educational Testing Service of Princeton, N.J., announced that the test would be yanked because of unforeseen security risks.
As long ago as May, the Kaplan Educational Centers, a New York-based test tutorial service, had warned in hearings before a New York legislative committee of a potential flaw in the computerized tests.
The problem: With written tests, which are given only a few times a year, questions are discarded after only one use, and a new test is created for each new group of students. That prevents students from passing on questions to future test-takers.
But that safeguard is impractical in computer format, Kaplan warned: Students can take the test virtually every day of the year, requiring an impossibly large pool of questions to make sure no two students get the same ones.
"Last Friday, my roommate called all excited, saying they were shutting down the Graduate Record Exam," said Charly Piken, a student at American University in Washington, who plans to do advanced work in sociology.
"I couldn't believe it. I've got to get my test scores to the graduate schools by Jan. 15. I called Educational Testing Service, but they didn't even apologize. 'This isn't our fault,' they said. 'Take your complaints to the Kaplan people.' "
Mr. Piken is one of about a thousand students left in the lurch when ETS announced that the test would be suspended on Wednesday.
ETS' move was prompted when Kaplan used undercover agents to take the test and afterward largely re-created it by pooling memories of the test questions. Kaplan was preparing to announce its findings when ETS pulled the test.
The testing service says that it can develop a new, secure test by Jan. 3, but Kaplan says that's just bravado.
Many students affected by the GRE's suspension had planned to take the exam during the Christmas interlude between semesters.
Now those students are scrambling to sign up for the new version in January. They will join upward of 20,000 graduating seniors previously expected to take the exam during the month.
But Jonathan Grayer, Kaplan's president, said he fears that the new GRE will not be any less susceptible to cheating than its predecessor.
"If they couldn't produce a foolproof test in all the years they spent developing it," Mr. Grayer said, "how are they going to do so by taking the GRE down for only one week's worth of repairs?"
That same question occurs to harried university administrators, who depend upon GRE's scores when forced to choose between potential graduate students with otherwise similar academic credentials.
When the ETS computerized version of the GRE was introduced in 1992 it was supposed to electronically tailor each student's test, feeding him harder questions every time he correctly answered a less difficult one.
According to ETS, this would provide a better measure of an individual's brain power than a pencil-and-paper test, where all takers face exactly the same questions.