Someone at the Lumberjack Online (which appears to be the student paper of Northern Arizona University) is NOT happy about all these standardized exams:
...the situational tests life throws in our path are not always the ones determining how far we get on the educational spectrum.
I can still recall the feeling of disappointment lurking in the pit of my stomach when I received my SAT scores in the mail during my senior year of high school. According to the results, I was below average compared to everyone else in the nation. After contemplating this, I wondered why I even studied so hard for the test...
In fact, the scores a student receives on a single standardized test at the college level can, at times, determine the difference between being admitted to the college of their dreams, or settling for mediocrity.
Not to sound unsympathetic, but I wasn't aware that all kids were guaranteed the right to be admitted to "the college of their dreams." Why is the only other alternative listed as "settling for mediocrity"? What's wrong with "settling for pretty good"?
As a matter of fact, ETS and The College Board, along with every other producer of admissions exams, do not advise colleges to use the score as a cutscore in admissions. A score band is always provided that allows for the error of measurement, and schools are perfectly free to give the tests as much, or as little, weight as they choose. Some schools don't use the SAT at all.
Just as SAT scores can determine scholarship eligibility and undergraduate admittance, most graduate schools require students to take the Graduate Record Examinations prior to acceptance into a desired program. If one is not happy with their score, electing to take the test again is an option, but it costs a pretty penny.
The test costs $115 (page 3), or two months worth of giving up cable TV. Fee waivers are available for students with limited resources (page 7). No, the test is not free, but the cost is not insanely prohibitive, either.
GREs are not the only standardized tests required for graduate school. If you plan on attending law school, you had better be prepared to take the LSAT, and you better do really well. According to www.lsatcenter.com, most law schools consider your scores on the LSAT to be more important than your accumulative GPA. The same is true for admission to medical school or any other type of esteemed specialized program.
And the reason for this is not because the schools worship standardized exams, or because they like to torture students. It's because LSAT scores predict first-year law school grades better than GPA alone, and since virturally all first-year students within a law school take the same coursework, the schools want the best way to choose the students who will live through that rough first year. Note that the schools make the decision on how to weight the LSAT, instead of LSAC making that decision. If the tests were not useful, the law schools would not use them (yes, I'm aware that accredited US law schools must require the LSAT, but they can weight it any way they like).
Personally, I think graduate schools need to re-evaluate their admission criterion. All things considered, most students agree that standardized testing does not accurately measure a person’s intelligence.
And they're not supposed to. They're supposed to predict who can handle coursework during the first year. Certainly, students with test anxiety may do poorly, but such students often have a slew of accomplishments in college to back up their claim of readiness, and schools are perfectly free to give more weight to grades than to test scores. Schools that do not give much weight to GPA may very well be the school of one's dreams, but when almost every kid applying has a GPA above 3.8, how is the school supposed to be able to distinguish the truly good from the grade-inflated? That's where an objective measure comes in.
After all, most people have to pay big bucks for graduate school, so why would admissions counselors let one score on a test affect a student’s admission status?
Because schools can't take every student who can afford to pay. Is the author suggesting that they should? Should ability to pay be the element that is more important than test scores? That hardly seems fair.
Every year, billions of dollars are spent by students who are trying to make themselves stand out by scoring well on required standardized tests. I have no idea where that money goes, but somehow I don’t think it’s put toward a worthy cause.
Um, it goes towards the test prep companies, for starters. Those are for-profit companies that use the money to produce more books and more advertising, and occasionally to sponsor scholarships. It also goes to the test developing companies like ETS and LSAC, which are not-for-profit companies that use the money to pay psychometricians to perform research showing that the tests are as valid and reliable and useful as possible. Test development companies also spend money on test prep and diagnostic services(page 8).
What would this writer consider a "worthy cause," I wonder? If the schools suddenly decided not to use our services, I suppose we'd all be out of business, but as long as schools (a) cannot accept all applicants and (b) need a quick and objective way to select those applicants who are best qualified for their programs, the tests will be necessary.
We deserve to know if our money is being used to better our educational systems, or if it’s being used to make an elite group of money-grubbing businessmen even richer than they already are.
Ex-cuse me? If you're referring to the for-profit test prep companies, go right ahead, but psychometricians who are "money-grubbing" are in the wrong field. None of us are getting rich off of this, and money isn't why we entered the field in the first place. There are a few for-profit testing companies springing up, but because they are mainly hired by school districts, they're not exactly raking in the bucks, either. ETS and the College Board and LSAC are, as I mentioned, not-for-profit, which means their employees do not get rich off testing fees.
I see these kind of articles all the time, really. They're always written by people who are convinced that tests just appear from on high, like Moses' scrolls, and who have no interest in understanding the financial or manpower needs that are required to keep such tests going. One form for an average large-scale, high-stakes, paper-and-pencil exam probably costs around $500,000 to develop, but that cost goes towards making sure that the quality assurance procedures, psychometric staffing, item writers, data entry folks, techies, and production values are as superior as possible. No one is making money off these exams; we spend the money to produce the exams; to score the exams; to figure out ways to improve the exams.
I find it hard to believe a doctor could get C’s all through his undergraduate career, ace one measly test, get admitted to a top-notch medical school, and still be allowed to cut open patients.
That is hard to believe, indeed, because it's not true. Who has convinced this writer that an applicant with poor undergraduate grades and a high MCAT score will get into Harvard Med, much less master Harvard's curriculum and then pass the medical board exams? That's ridiculous. Schools have a name for this type of applicant - "underachievers." These are students with potential who, so far, haven't displayed much of it. Competitive schools aren't going to admit this type of applicant.
Someone with a high GPA and a low MCAT score probably won't get into Harvard Med, unless there's a slew of other mitigating factors and/or Harvard has decided to downplay the MCAT for certain applicants.
However, with entrance exams weighed as heavily as they are, I am sure that kind of thing happens quite frequently.
No, it doesn't. As I pointed out above, the combination of motivated students and grade inflation practically ensures that almost all applicants to top-notch schools will have high GPAs; the low GPA students are the ones who don't stand a chance.
I propose one simple solution: All standardized admittance tests should be abolished. Intelligence is ambiguous. Nobody will ever be able to evaluate how smart someone is, so testing administrators need to quit stealing people’s money, and look at what really matters – work ethic, grades and a heck of a lot of self-determination.
Oh, that's so dumb, and a complete cop-out. This writer, citing no evidence to support her claim, completely ignores all the decades of accumulated data about intelligence, apititude, and ability testing, and demands that schools admit all determined students who work hard and make good grades. Never mind that "work ethic" and "self-determination" are more difficult to judge than intelligence. Never mind that at some colleges, almost half of all students have A averages, which doesn't leave post-collegiate programs much in terms of decision-making. Never mind that tests such as the GRE and SAT are equated over time, while grades are not. Never mind that there is some evidence supporting the claim that high school grades may be inflated, although not to as large an extent as many claim. And if intelligence is so "ambiguous," why admit only those students with good grades? Couldn't it be argued that those with low GPAs were "intelligent" in ways that couldn't be measured in class?
I'm not sure why I wasted time on this article, given that the writer does nothing more than use ad hominem attacks and straw-man arguments to convey the extreme pissy displeasure of someone who still hasn't gotten over getting a low SAT score. C'mon, people. There are legimate testing criticisms to be made; it's sad to see a writer with access to a school newspaper waste space with tripe like this.
Posted by kswygert at October 24, 2003 10:53 AM