SAT, etcRe: Greater Confidence in Democrats, Poll Finds

Christine Peterson quintanus at hotmail.com
Thu Nov 11 00:01:10 PST 1999



>Maureen Therese Anderson wrote:
>
> > (first-generation college attender who probably scored lower than GWB
>but
> > really don't recall--only remember filling in all those dreadful little
> > ovals with #2 pencil while suddenly wishing I hadn't slept through math
> > class and wondering what would happen if I craftily filled in two ovals
>per
> > question instead of one...)
>
>SAT, of course, has not been here since Year 1. I never even heard of
>it until I already had my Ph.D. In fact, the first time I ever heard of the
>GRE was when another person on the faculty proclaimed that *everyone*
>in grand school had taken it. These tests are relatively recent. No SAT
>(or any other national test) at Western Michigan in 1947; no GRE at
>U of Mich in 1955.
>
>Carrol
>
>
And apparently they're inviting seventh graders to take it now, so I guess they can focus their entire middle and high school years on the goal - getting good test scores. Despite the lengths they imply that that company that gives them (which is a kind of scandalous for-profit nonprofit - Ralph Nader wrote a book about it, and I did a little article once) goes to to avoid cultural bias, it seems that half of the verbal analogy questions are noticably class biased, and you get these questions like 'platoon is to battallion as...' which would be sexist because there is a percentage of boys who like to read about wars. GRE tests are even dumber - reducing four years of undergraduate college into a measurement of ability with more algebra/geometry and analogy questions. Those tests are quite expensive, at up to hundreds of dollars, and the money is going somewhere. Of course, a previous admission criteria before SAT+grades+ wealth was just wealth.

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