On the Use (and Misuse) of Standardized Tests.

After months of waiting, I finally took one of my exams today, which has allowed me time to post this entry. I found the exam tedious and silly, and if hadn't been for admissions purposes, I would not suffer myself to endure another moment preparing for standardized tests such as the GREs.

I believe that the GREs don't provide any more information than that already found on a candidate's trasncript. The SATs and the GREs are supposed to test you on your verbal and quantitative ability. But honestly, could the admissions committee not learn that from your transcript? If they see that a candidate applying for programs in the Arts, for example, has taken science classes with quantitative components as well as basic math classes (including advanced Calculus), is that not enough for this particular candidate to enter Graduate school? After all, how much use would finding the lowest factor of a random set of numbers be of use to this particular student? Isn't it more important for her to spend her time on her actual subject, Art in this case, rather than studying for something that might ultimately not help her in a substantial way?

This way of measuring one's Quantiative ability also affects Science majors who, for the most part, are more familiar with number-crunching and generating graphs than Humanities majors. Consider the case of a Chemistry student who is working on her senior thesis, which is a year-long project, involving sufficient research and handling of science literature. If this student, who is plotting graphs and and working with data for a project that she has designed and executed after careful study with an adivsor, is now asked to generate numbers for seemingly random mathematical questions that have little basis for application in her current study, could she be expected to perform the same way in these 2 hours as she does during the course of working for her year-long thesis? The answer is, No. Unlike working on a long, complicated project, the GRE requires you to generate answers to much more simpler questions fast. I have heard of some Math majors who have found the Quantitative portion challenging simply because the test asks you for answers under time pressure without allowing you any time to get to know your subject or each question under consideration.

When a student's verbal ability could be discerned from her trancript as well as her writing sample, I don't see the point of having a standardized test to confirm her verbal ability. If the student is able to communicate well in her writing and it appears to be so from her personal statment, where she tells the admissions committee about why she wants to pursue the subject, then of why should there be a test to see how many words she knows in English or the degree of reading comprehension she can perform in a limited time? While the GRE prep-books vary in the length of their word-lists, which are basically a compilation of lists of "hot GRE words" that one must know in order to "ace the test", many of these lists contain these words in isolation--for they just list the meaning or at least one possible sentence in which the word can be used. Without being familiar with how these words are applied in various situations, merely memorizing them from such lists would not be enough. And if the GRE verbal sections tests students on these "hot words", then it does not do justice to those students who would not have been familiar with the application of these "hot words" outside the prep-book realm. For example, if the student is not a native spearker or has had limited access to literary journals or sophisticated newspapers, they would not fare well when tested on such words. Such a test does not measure the student's intelligence as much as how many words she knows. In this sense, since the amount of words one knows is also related to socio-economic factors, the results need to be carefully analyzed along with other information about the student. If all admissions committees were able to devote as much attention to a single candidate's admission file, it might be able learn as much about the applicant as possible, including the factors that affected her acadmics, and then make a a fair decision based on her credentials.

As for Starndardized Tests and their effect on the Imagination, I feel that this warrants a seperate post altogether. However, I would like to make a few points in this post. Firsly, nothing kills the Imagination more than adherence to formula, to stringent rules. And nothing a student would encounter throughout her schooling would be more formulaic than Standardized Tests. Secondly, there appears to be a sort of double-standard amongst scholars. In order to study "Literature", which includes reading works of Fiction, they maintain that you must not be imaginative yourself. Otherwise, this tendency to imagine could make it harder for you to do well on Standardized tests which are based on spewing out facts rather than testing you on the depth not just of how much you know of the subject, but also the extent of your wish to learn it. For example, if a student wishes to study James Joyce, she must not even attempt to imagine and discover what it means to produce a "stream-of-consciousness" narration for herself. All she needs to do well on the Literature GRE test is to memorize a tedious list of facts, which are in fact, things she must as a future-scholar, question rather than accept. If she failed to do well, she could be barred from entering Graduate school where she had infact planned to study Joyce in the first place.

I understand that objectivity is necessary for scholarly work, but how objective is earning a higher score (through largely rote learing and memorization) or a lower score (due to use of the imagination and unwillingness to accept facts) on a Literature standardized test. How is this not misleading?