Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Testing the Test


I recommend the daily updates from the Chronicle for Higher Education, though only if you know how to create rules in your Outlook (these emails are indeed daily). A recent piece I found interesting on Testing the Test. I can't be the only doctoral student who loathed the process of writing the GRE (Dave I still have your GRE prep book!) - though not in English lit as this article discusses.

As I recall I did well enough, but the only school that required it was Notre Dame, which I didn't end up attending. Furthermore, the cost of the test is nearly prohibitive these days and schools give only peripheral attention to (some) standardized tests.

It seems to me that the GRE is a relic of the swinging 60's and the positivist 70's, and it's time to retire it. Surely CV's, recommendations and writing samples are far better indicators than whether I can accurately recall my Calculus OAC class.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is unpleasant to look back on when I was preparing for the GMAT. Even after a second writing, my scores were split - high qualitatively and low quantitatively. Despite this, I managed to "talk" my way into my MBA program and subsequently finished in the top 10%.

Even the schools that do require them don't seem to know why . . .