GREs

With senior year coming up, the grad school hunt underway and two sets of GREs to take I figured that I'd get a head start and take the General test at the end of the summer. In order to prepare I bought one of those books to tell you what's on it and to review some vocab and a little geometry that I haven't done since freshman year of high school. The book, Barron's, is widely considered to be the best in its class. It may be the stupidest thing I have ever read.

The book starts off with a short Q&A about the test. It states that the GREs are a computer based test, that means there is no paper (no shit). The question is: "If there's no paper, how am I going to be able to cross off incorrect answers?" ... Are you serious? The book's answer: "Just write the answers down on scrap paper, and cross them off there." Are YOU serious? Why don't you just remember for the two minutes it takes to answer the fucking question that three out of the five don't make any fucking sense. I mean, if you really need someone to tell you to write it down if you can't remember it then maybe graduate school isn't for you.

However, it is this quote that really angered me: "the goal of this book is to help you get credit for all of the problems you know how to do, and, by using the TACTICS, to get credit for many that you don't know how to do." There's something really wrong with this mode of thinking. Instead of the book trying to teach you how to do the problems you don't know how to do it gives you ways to get around actually... learning. It makes me sick. There was one question I looked at, quickly did the algebra in my head and the checked the answer in te back of the book. They have an explanation for each one and aparently my way was the "wrong way" to do it. Instead of using "tricky, complex math" you should "guestimate."

Standardized tests are a joke because of this. They do not test people's knowledge of the material tested only their knowledge of how to get around the material tested. I remember before the AP Chem test, Mr. Dimpfl decided not to teach us Kinetics because they were on the test last year so the odds were against it being there again. There needs to be some sort of test without any of this prep crap beforehand. People should just go into the GREs or SATs without having done any prior studying and whatever result they get is what they get. Hell, it'd sure as hell beat studying a month before the test.