MEMPHIS, Tenn. — The GED is getting harder, and when we say harder, we found some college graduates can’t even pass it.

A private company started designing the tests, making it four times more expensive and dramatically tougher, claiming the old one wasn’t being taken seriously by businesses and colleges.

Every year, there are thousands of high school drop-outs in the Mid-South who are preparing to take the GED.

“I am 31 years of age.  I’m going back now and trying to get my GED,” Natasha Jones, who is studying for the exam, said. “Without an education, it is hard. It’s hard to get a job. It is hard for people to accept you.”

Nationally, 75 percent passed the GED in 2013, and about 60 percent passed last year.

“When Common Core was implemented, a lot of people thought [the current level of GED] didn’t match the level of Common Core,” Anna Snickenberger, a teacher at HopeWorks, said.

HopeWorks is a non-profit in Memphis that prepares you for the GED.

Snickenberger said the new exam is based on Common Core, a set of standards that weren’t in place when most test-takers went to school.

“We are continuously revising and adapting our curriculum to make it more challenging, and to align with more standards on test,” Snickenberger said.

The GED can be difficult, especially if you’ve been out of school for a while, but we wanted to know would it be hard for those who graduated and went on to college.

We got a hold of a practice exam from HopeWorks and put it to the test.

The actual test takes eight hours, while a practice exam takes two and a half hours, so we asked people to take a section instead.

HopeWorks told us the two hardest sections are social studies and math.

Robbie Reid is studying for the bar exam after graduating from the University of Memphis Law School.  He volunteered to take the social studies section of the exam for us.

Reid only got one wrong, but sees how it could be tricky, because there’s reading comprehension and diagrams.

“The answer is there, but it is not always clear-cut,” he said.

The math section was a different story. Cormac Parker is a grad student at the University of Memphis, and Cameron Symlar is a senior. Let’s just say it wasn’t pretty.

“I got 14 out of 25. That’s horrible,” Parker said.

The guys told WREG it was exhausting. There were equations they don’t even remember learning in high school.

“I haven’t had a math course in five years and going back over this stuff, like geometry and trig,” Symlar said.

“If this is supposed to mimic high school, it’s unreal. I don’t get it,” Parker said.

“Because there was leap in difficulty, the sates, Tennessee being one of them, adopted a second test,” HopeWorks Supervisor Susan Rubio said.

Rubio said that new exam is called the High School Equivalency Test, or HiSet, and while it will eventually be as hard as the GED, it’s taking smaller steps to get there.

She said test-takers are just learning about it, but like that it’s cheaper and don’t have to take it on a computer.

Rubio doesn’t want you to get discouraged. Yes, it will take some work preparing for the GED, but it will be well worth it.