Standardized tests are great at measuring students' ability - that is, their ability to buy a review book and attend a class. The narrow multiple-choice questions require little critical or creative thought, but rather one's ability to learn certain test-taking tricks. The most reprehensible use of standardized tests occurs when universities and graduate schools enact minimum cut-off points for scores and disqualify students who are perhaps quite intelligent and capable of handling undergraduate or graduate studies.
The best way to gauge students' abilities is to examine their scholastic experience as a whole - what their grades are, what their teachers and mentors say about them, what activities they are involved in, and so on.
A much more dangerous way to gauge scholastic ability is to administer a one-day test that can single-handedly disqualify a student from admission regardless of other achievements. Most undergraduate schools and many graduate schools have minimum GRE or SAT requirements.
A recent study conducted by Educational Testing Services - the company that produces the SAT and GRE, by the way - proved this very point.
The study found scores on the GRE provided at best a weak prediction of first-year graduate grades - only nine percent of the variation in grades could be explained by the GRE. Undergraduate grades, however, were found to be a much stronger predictor.
Four years of solid undergraduate or high school work will definitively demonstrate, as best as is possible, one's abilities as a student. An SAT or GRE exam, on the other hand, shows how well a student performed on one test on one day - and if the student is having a bad day (just broke up with a girlfriend, kicked off the football team, fell in a puddle, tired, sick, hungry) the score will be greatly skewed.
The questions themselves do not even necessarily require intelligence to answer correctly - anyone who has taken a SAT or GRE prep course knows the name of the game is learning certain tricks and rules.
To learn those tricks and rules, one needs not be intelligent, but rather rich. Kaplan review courses in the Buffalo area for the GRE start at $1049. Even the impersonal online tutoring is $499.
The programs absolutely guarantee a higher score and even offer refunds if one is not achieved. Very few people go back for refunds, and so the question seems to be this: does a high score on the GRE mean you are smart or that you have money to spend on review?
Another ETS study seems to provide the answer. The study, completed in 1994, showed only four percent of students who scored between 750 and 800 on the GRE had fathers who did not complete high school. Conversely, an eye-popping 90 percent of students in that range had fathers with graduate or professional degrees.
Standardized tests are only useful in evaluating socio-economic position, test-taking ability and one's performance on one particular day. Nobody should ever be denied admission based on a single test they can pay money to score higher on.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
