(Monday, October 26, 2026)


This Week in GRE & Grad Admissions: The ETS Breach Becomes a Lawsuit, and a Real Look at Who Still Requires the GRE

Two things worth knowing this week if you're studying for the GRE or applying to grad school.

1. Last Week's ETS Data Breach Is Now a Class-Action Lawsuit — ~7 Million Students

Follow-up to the breach we flagged last week: on October 20, two California minors and a 2026 public-school graduate filed a proposed class action against ETS over the May 22–September 18 file-transfer breach. Plaintiffs' attorneys now estimate roughly 7 million current and former California public school students were affected — far bigger than it initially sounded. The suit alleges negligence, breach of contract, invasion of privacy, and violations of California's Unfair Competition Law, pointing to the ~3-month gap between the earliest access and ETS catching it (September 25) as evidence of inadequate security. To repeat the nuance from last week: this is still the California K-12 assessment contract, not the GRE test-taker database, and SSNs/passwords/financial info reportedly weren't exposed. But a 7-million-person class action against the company running your GRE is the kind of thing worth knowing about even if your own data wasn't in this particular pot.

Source: ETS Sued Over Data Breach Affecting Current, Former Calif. Students — GovTech



2. Who Actually Requires the GRE for Fall 2027? It's Program-by-Program, Not University-Wide

A new check of 15 US department pages makes a point worth internalizing: GRE policy isn't set at the university level, it's set program-by-program, and it changes between cycles. Example from the same school: Stanford Computer Science MS doesn't accept GRE scores at all, while Stanford Management Science & Engineering and Stanford Statistics both require them. Stony Brook CS requires it only for international applicants without a US/Canadian degree. MIT Mechanical Engineering required the GRE for Fall 2026 but dropped it for Fall 2027 — so last year's list you saved is already out of date. And even where it's "optional," the advice holds: a strong score can offset a lower GPA, a three-year degree, a less-known undergrad institution, or a field switch, and some scholarships still key off test scores. Worth individually checking the current-cycle page for every program on your list rather than trusting any aggregated "GRE-optional schools" list you find online — including the ones floating around this forum.

Source: GRE Required for Fall 2027? Honest Answers for 15 US Programmes — Maven Consulting
```