ganGREnous test issued vital medicine

First of all, if you’re just tuning back in, go check out my photos from Europe (but don’t use the “view as slideshow” option…make me feel like you care what I have to say and read my captions under the photos).

Now to the point: a year from this month, in October 2006, the Graduate Record Exam (GRE)-that purported barometer of how students will perform in graduate school-will undergo a major facelift. According to the Times' interview with the executive director of the GRE program,

On the new exams, the verbal reasoning section will consist of two 40-minute sections rather than one 30-minute section, and will place less emphasis on vocabulary and more on higher cognitive skills...The quantitative reasoning section will grow from one 45-minute section to two 40-minute sections, with fewer geometry questions and more on interpreting tables and graphs. And the analytical writing measure, which had a 45-minute essay and a 30-minute essay, will now have two 30-minute essays.

I openly embrace these changes. Although this remark will surely inspire many grumbles, I think the test needs to be longer. When you’re only given 30 minutes to prove your adeptness in verbal reasoning and 45 in quantitative pursuits, it seems a trip or a slip could really damage your score. By increasing the number of questions, the severity of such slips diminishes and a greater understanding of the student’s abilities surfaces.

I can personally attest to this because I took the GRE at the end of September when a virtual avalanche of both personal and professional pressures amounted. After running from work to the testing center, I mistakenly thought myself at peace and prepared to test. Near the end of the initial writing section, and especially in the following quantitative part, the pressures I’d warded off for a few minutes came barreling back. A crippling anxiety attack ensued that literally paralyzed me mentally. I only bring it up here because I find it pertinent to my argument. The time constriction and tiny opportunity to prove my abilities intensified the pressures once they surfaced and magnified what should have been a brief period of anxiety into something devastating; there was no time to recover. The new GRE formula promises that such crises could be averted by promising students ample opportunity to amend a 5-minute mental lapse. By no means do I consider myself alone in facing these exterior burdens when testing; therefore, I think many others would support an extension of the GRE’s breadth, as well. Although the GRE by no means constitutes the only, or even the most important criteria (and, it shouldn’t) upon which graduate schools will measure a student, it nevertheless does bear some importance. Therefore, students should have adequate opportunity to demonstrate their abilities [ps. I took the test the following week after a breath of fresh air and the differences between the two testing sessions was night and day-if this happens to anyone else inane enough to schedule under such circumstances, don’t worry, just take it again].

Aside from the length, the nature of the questions needs attention. I transformed into a lab rat and took ETS's experimental verbal section after concluding my test and found the questions much more meaningful. As mentioned above, the present questions emphasize vocabulary WAY too much and often preclude test-takers from utilizing enough critical thinking to effectively reason towards a solution if they don't know the definition of some esoteric word. This should be about thinking and comprehending, not memorizing vocabulary. Don't get me wrong, I love words and often find more interesting words capable of conveying more interesting thoughts. But that's certainly not always true and a big words don't necessarily make you smart. ETS way overexaggerates their import. The newer questions address that point effectively, in my opinion.

Another welcome change is ETS’s decision to dispose of “computer adaptive” testing. In essence, if you answer a question correctly, the computer spits out a more difficult question the next time. If you answer incorrectly, the computer gives an ‘easier’ follow-up question. According to ETS’s philosophy, the computer eventually narrows in on your skill in a particular subject through this trial and error approach.

This presents a number of problems, however. First of all, you could easily find yourself caught in a maelstrom of analysis with the appearance of each subsequent question as you tried to gauge whether it seemed more difficult than the previous question. Considering the inherent pressure already weighing on test takers, this additional psychological burden could easily distract beyond acceptable limits, further compromising the validity of the final score. Furthermore, it removes any nagging arbitrariness in determining the ‘difficulty’ of a particular question. I mean, maybe you got the preceding question wrong and, hence, received an ‘easier’ follow-up question, but who decides whether that follow-up question is really any easier after all? I mean, if your percentage reflects how you tested compared to everyone else, shouldn’t you all answer the same questions?

Finally, out of roughly 30 questions in a section, the initial 10 weigh much heavier in determining your final score because the following 20 questions only serve to refine an already grossly defined score. In other words, mess up on a couple questions early, and your score might not reflect your true abilities. So, for all these reasons, good riddance “computer adaptive” testing.

I also like that “every question on the new exams will be used only once, and the test will start at different times in different time zones, so students who have finished cannot pass on questions to those in different zones.” It was glaringly obvious that if you were fanatical about raising your scores ten or twenty points (maybe even more), you could easily drill friends or find a website chalked full of probable questions.

In long-awaited conclusion, if they’re going to insist on an entrance exam, then why not make it more meaningful. I fully support the revisions planned by ETS to broaden the scope of the GRE and revise the nature of the material.