Archive for the ‘Tests’ Category

What does the SAT test?

Posted by Test Preparation on October 14th, 2009

Just because the SAT features math & reading problems doesn’t mean that it reflects what you learned in school. You can ace calculus or write like Faulkner and still struggle with the SAT. The test writers say that the test measures ‘reasoning ability’, but actually, all the SAT really measures is how well you take the SAT. It does not reveal how smart or how good a person you are.

Who writes the SAT?
Even though colleges and universities make wide use of the SAT, they’re not the ones who write the test. That’s the job of Educational Testing Service (ETS), a nonprofit company that is in the business of writing tests for college and graduate school admissions, ETS also writes tests for groups as diverse as butchers and professional golfers (who knew?).

ETS is often criticized for the SAT. Many educators have argued that the test does not measure the skills you need for college. In fact, several years ago the University of California, one of the nation’s largest university systems, decided that the SAT didn’t provide enough information for admissions. ETS scrambled to change the test and introduced the current version of the SAT. It’s almost an hour longer than the old SAT and - unlike the old version - tests grammar and includes an essay.

You may be surprised to learn that the people who write SAT test questions are NOT teachers or college professors. The people who write the SAT are professional test writers, not superhuman geniuses. So you can beat them at their own game.

What’s on the SAT?
The SAT runs 3 hours and 45 minutes and is divided into 10 sections. These include:

  • one 25-minute Essay section, requiring you to present your viewpoint on a topic
  • two 25-minute Math sections, containing multiple-choice questions and response questions (called ‘grid-ins’ by many)
  • two 25-minute Critical Reading sections, made up of sentence completions and reading comprehension questions
  • one 25-minute Writing section, containing error identification questions, improving sentences questions, and improving paragraphs questions
  • one 20-minute Math section, including only multiple-choice questions
  • one 20-minute Critical Reading section, again featuring sentence completions and reading comprehension questions
  • one 10-minute Writing section containing only improving sentences questions
  • one 25 minute Experimental section, which may be Writing, Math, or Critical Reading. There’s no way to tell which section is the Experimental, so treat every section as if it will be scored.

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Some common GMAT questions

Posted by Test Preparation on October 13th, 2009

What is the GMAT?
The Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) is a standardized, three-part test delivered in English. The test was designed to help admission officers evaluate how suitable individual applicants are for their graduate business and management programs. It measures basic verbal, mathematical, and analytical writing skills that a test taker has developed over a long period of time through education & work.

The GMAT test doesn’t measure a person’s knowledge of specific fields of study. Graduate business and management programs enroll people from many different undergraduate and work backgrounds, so rather than test your mastery of any particular subject area, the GMAT test will assess your acquired skills. Your GMAT score will give admission officers a statistically reliable measure of how well you are likely to perform academically in the core curriculum of a graduate business program.

Of course, there are many other qualifications that can help people succeed in business school and in their careers - for instance, job experience, leadership ability, motivation, and interpersonal skills. The GMAT test doesn’t gauge these qualities. That is why your GMAT score is intended to be used as one standard admission criterion among others, more subjective, criteria, such as admissions essays and interviews.

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GMAT Myths & Facts

Posted by Test Preparation on October 12th, 2009

Myth: If I don’t score in the 90th percentile, I won’t get into any school I choose.
Fact: Very few people get very high scores.

Fewer than 50 of the more than 200,000 people taking the GMAT test each year get a perfect score of 800. Thus, while you may be exceptionally capable, the odds are against your achieving a perfect score. Also, the GMAT test is just one piece of your application packet. Admissions officers use GMAT scores in conjunction with undergraduate records, application essays, interviews, letters of recommendation, and other information when deciding whom to accept into their programs.

Myth: Getting an easier question means I answered the last one wrong.
Fact: Getting an easier question does not necessarily mean you got the previous question wrong.

To ensure that everyone receives the same content, the test selects a specific number of questions of each type. The test may call for your next question to be a relatively hard problem-solving item involving arithmetic operations. But, if there are no more relatively difficult problem-solving items involving arithmetic, you might be given an easier item.

Most people are not skilled at estimating item difficulty, so don’t worry when taking the test or waste valuable time trying to determine the difficulty of the questions you are answering.

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Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL)

Posted by Test Preparation on September 28th, 2009

TOEFL

TOEFL

The TOEFL, or Test of English as a Foreign Language, is taken by students who hail from countries where English is not the first language, either spoken or written, for admission to schools, colleges & universities in countries where the first language is English. Today, TOEFL is the most widely accepted English language test in the world which judges the reading, listening, speaking & writing ability of a student in the English language for an academic setting.

Apart from schools, colleges & universities, institues such as government agencies, licencing bodies, businesses & even scholarship programs may require TOEFL (pronounced ‘toe-full’) test to be taken to judge the english language proficiency of the candidate. The score of the test is valid for 2 years & after that it’s not officially reported as the language proficiency of the candidate may have been changed significantly in 2 years. Academic institutes usually consider only the most recent TOEFL score while other institutes may accept older TOEFL scores of upto 2 years.

TOEFL is offered worldwide by the ETS (Educational Testing Service) and is the registered trademark of the organization. ETS offers many tests apart from TOEFL such as GRE, TOEIC, subject tests for the students of schools in USA and many more. TOEFL was first developed & offered by Center for Applied Linguistics led by Dr Charles A Ferguson in the year 1964 and since then, millions of students worldwide have taken the test & other millions take the test every year.

The TOEFL Committee of Examiners is composed of 16-member board out of which it has 12 specialists in linguistics, language testing, teaching or research. Its main responsibility is to advise on TOEFL test content & help ensure that the test is a valid measure of English language proficiency reflecting current trends and methodologies across the world. TOEFL is currently being offered in paper based format only. The internet based test was discontinued in September 2006.

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