Think of your best friend in high school. Say he asked for $100 every few months and gave you nothing in return. And if you got jumpy and called him prematurely, he’d happily charge you another $10.
We all come may come from different schools, but none of us could escape the claws of that oh-so-friendly menace — the Educational Testing Service.
And just when you thought you were done with ETS, the villain makes a triumphant return during your junior year of college. That’s because ETS controls another predator, the Graduate Record Examinations. Almost everyone applying to a non-professional graduate school must take this exam.
Last summer, I sat down to prepare for the GRE and found myself in a world of antonyms and 30-60-90 triangles. $1300 poorer and two months later, I completed a useless Kaplan prep course and could rattle off the definitions of arcane “vocabulary.”
The GRE is particularly stressful because it is currently “Computer Adaptive,” which means it must — with few exceptions — be taken on the computer.
The test consists of 28 math questions and 30 verbal questions. The earlier questions are weighted more heavily, and all answers are final. The base score is 500. When you answer correctly, you will receive a harder question. You can predict exactly how you are doing while you are taking the test. Once in a hole, there’s little hope of getting out.
The rules are ridiculously strict: five pieces of scrap paper at a time max. No test booklet to ceremoniously cross out wrong choice. And you can’t add or remove clothing during the exam (because obviously, you are storing vocabulary flashcards in the pockets of your hoodie).
Four days ago, ETS acted in its typically admirable form. The New York Times reported that after four years and $12 million of strategizing and investing, ETS completely abandoned changes to the GRE scheduled to begin in July.
While the anticipated changes would’ve made the exam even more absurd, the test can’t remain in its current version. The GRE needs to be restructured immediately and returned to a more reasonable paper-based format, in which each question has an equivalent impact on your score.
For the time being, however, if you’re about to take the test: make sure you come back in time from your bathroom break — because the computer will happily restart without you.
An RSS feed of The Spin is available
April 6th, 2007 at 11:46 am
Actually, people are lucky that the GRE isn’t changing. In its current form, it is a rather easy test. The changes sounded like they would make the test more challenging.
April 6th, 2007 at 2:05 pm
I definitely agree with Grad Student’s comment. During my exam, we had a sample experimental section that was a sample of this new test. For some of the questions, you were allowed to select multiple answers, which would have made both scoring and success extremely difficult. Here’s a good Web site that explains what some of these ridiculous changes would have been: http://www.petersons.com/common/article.asp?id=1943&path=gr.pft.advice&sponsor=1
That being said, however, the GRE should still be altered from its current form, as I advocate in my post. Thanks for reading!
April 7th, 2007 at 10:26 am
I think that Sharon brings up some very good points. Taking tests on paper is a much more fair way to administer a test. If different people see different questions, how is that fair at all?