ETS has opened exploratory talks to divest two cornerstone exams — the GRE and TOEFL — signaling a potential private-market shakeup in graduate admissions and international student testing. People familiar with the talks told The Wall Street Journal the exams could fetch about $500 million as ETS weighs strategic investors or outright sales after years of falling test volumes and volatile earnings. The decision follows steep declines in GRE takers since the pandemic and revenue swings that forced ETS to cut staff and rethink its business model. The move would hand control of globally used admissions benchmarks to private operators and could accelerate product changes, pricing shifts, and interoperability negotiations with graduate programs. Admissions officers, testing centers, and international recruiters will watch buyers’ plans for test access, data governance, and pricing. Any sale would force institutions to reassess admissions policies that rely on ETS-owned metrics and could hasten alternatives such as program-level assessments or university-developed proficiency measures.