Google as Corpus - "I took GRE" vs. "I took the GRE"

As a native speaker of English, for some reason I have this intuition that "I took the GRE" is preferable to "I took GRE."

However, "I took GRE" yields over 66,000 hits on Google, whereas "I took the GRE" only shows about 44,000.

So either I'm wrong (possible) or more non-native speakers take the GRE than native speakers (also quite possible).

It could also have something to do with "I took GRE classes" or sentences like that.

But still:

"I took GRE yesterday" - 587

"I took the GRE yesterday" - 241

However:

"I took SAT yesterday" - 2

"I took the SAT yesterday" 157

So...maybe more NNSs are taking the GRE and writing about it on the internet, while more NSs are taking the SAT and writing about it on the internet?