To ETS, dba GRE, SAT, etc., FUK U

The BBQ Pit
1

I’m applying for grad school. The GRE (not “GRE or an equivalent exam”, for there is no equivalent exam) is mandatory for admission to most grad programs. Okay, fine.

I took the GRE. I paid $109 for the computer based test. Highway robbery in and of itself, more in fact than the computer I took the test on could possibly cost but I digress.

The test has changed since the last time I took it (8 years ago or so), which is nice. Gone are those “Tom can only work on days when Mary wears a blue shirt but Mary’s blue shirt is shared with Debbie who must work on Wednesdays which is the day that Carl has to go to dialysis but it is not the day that Eddie has to stay home and worship Osiris, which means that Susie can work only on days when her conjoined twin Lizzie is at choir practice and that is not Friday. Answer these questions: Who can work Thursday if Mary is found strangled and dead while wearing the blue shirt and Carl was at the dentist?” type questions that you just want to answer with “D. Kill every last one of them, hire new staff and let God sort it out”. It has been replaced with analytical writing which is graded by “live humans”. But again I digress.

I got the scores for the Verbal and Quantitative sections that day, just as before. I got a 640 in Verbal and a 680 in Quantitative (or the other way around, I can’t remember, but I do remember the percentages).

For Quantitative, 680 (or was it 640?) put me in the 54% range (i.e. I answered as many or more questions correctly than 54% of the people taking the test and fewer correct than 46%) so in “Mrs. Rumph’s Second Grade” analogies I’m neither selecting donated cereal prizes from the bin in THE MAJESTIC EAGLE GROUP’s corner or across the room hoping Benjie doesn’t get piss on me after he drinks his Jungle Juice while sitting with the EMACIATED HUMMINGBIRD GROUP. Since I’m not applying into a field that requires math or science and it’s been so long since I had a math or science course that (no exaggeration) my last math teacher is dead and my last science teacher is senile, I’m not proud of the score but I can live with it (i.e. I’m not going to retake the test). In Verbal I was in the 93% (i.e. as good as or better than 93% of takers, not as good as 7%) which disappointed me a bit as I wanted to be in the top 5%, but I was happy enough, I’ll settle, it’s not worth taking the test again. The third component, Analytical writing, as I said, has to be graded by humans.

I waited two weeks for the results and they still had not come. No biggie, but I was filling out applications that ask for your scores and will not process without them, giving a “Field must be populated” error message and there was no option for the Analytical Writing score other than a number between 1.0 and 6.0. I called Educational Testing Systems (ETS), the company that administers the test, to see if it has been graded and according to their recording, yes it has been. Kindly press “FUCK ME BABY! GIVE IT TO ME LIKE I’M TINA AND YOU IKE AND I WAS LATE GOING ON STAGE LAST NIGHT AND NOW IT’S MAKE UP SEX AFTER YOU BROKE YOUR HAND GIVING ME WHAT I DESERVED!” to hear your scores.

[Lemony Snicket]“FUCK ME BABY! GIVE IT TO ME LIKE I’M TINA AND YOU IKE AND I WAS LATE GOING ON STAGE LAST NIGHT AND NOW IT’S MAKE UP SEX AFTER YOU BROKE YOUR HAND GIVING ME WHAT I DESERVED!” in this case means "enter your credit card and pay $15.00. To HEAR the score (nothing official, just to HEAR the score) on one of the three components of the test you’ve already paid $109 to take. [/Lemony Snicket]

That is frigging ridiculous.

The good news was that I got a perfect score on Analytical Writing (6.0 - it’s done differently than the other scores, obviously) which puts me in the 96% (and since 6.0 is the max that means I’m tied with the other 4%) so that at least was good. Bad news is I’m out $15 to hear a one second recording. Brando didn’t make that kind of dough for Superman II.

Well suh, on the day you take the test you have the option of sending the scores to 4 universities. I’m applying to 8 universities, possibly more. For each additional university it costs $15 to forward the test scores. Since I have a 54% in math I have just over half a chance of being right when I say that’s $60 to print off four letters and plop 'em in the mail. If I apply for more schools, of course, $15 each.

Now, GRE is, again, mandatory for grad school. SATs are mandatory for some schools and the fees and charges are, again, exorbitant. TOEFL, PRAXIS, CLEP, etc., and all other tests they administer (wiki has a listing). They have a near monopoly on some markets and an actual monopoly on others, so you have no choice but to pay their outrageous fucking fees. Banks have been sued for charging less in mailing fees and the like.

This isn’t the first time I’ve gotten pissed at this “Press One To Let Me Knee You in the Nads” monopoly and at least I can afford it better this time, but it still pisses me off. So does the knowledge that ETS is a non-profit company and has revenues of over $900 million per year.

So the general question part: any idea how a company that can EASILY clear $200 for one mass produced and distributed test is non-profit? (They sure as hell aren’t paying the girl who sits outside the testing room $250/hour, and judging by how many others were taking the test at the same time the company was paid at least that much, and the computer was at least 10 years old.) I doubt the people who write their questions or grade the analytical components are driving Mercedes SUVs to their vacation homes with the money they’re paid. Where does the money go?
Also, why aren’t they more reviled as a monopoly?

Not to go all Ayn Rand and the like, but I can almost guarantee you that if you let a for-profit company take over this it would cost less to administer the test and forward your scores and they’d still make money. You can’t convince me that it costs $75 to send 5 letters to 5 schools.

The point is that I think if anything it’s the Fundamentalist interpretation of scripture that’s a Satanic ploy, and a brilliant one at that, and that there’s no way in hell a cop in Chicago could afford a house like the one on Family Matters, especially with that many people not working, thus Carl was probably selling meth. And I hate non-profit monopolies.

2

Congrats on doing well on the GRE, Sampiro.

And

FUCK ETS

They’re fucking evil. They’re more evil than the bridal shop that charged me as much for alterations as they did for my dress. They make every other evil company look like the Diet Coke of evil.

3

Ah, I forgot to mention- I received my scores by mail more than a week after the $15 phone call.

4

I’ve graded AP exams for ETS. The pay is $1,450 for seven days of work, eight hours a day – but more to the point, they sent us to Daytona Beach to do it, and put us up in a rather nice hotel (two to a room, but who cares, it adds up). And they feed you more or less constantly, although it’s standard college-cafeteria stodge.

I also interviewed for a test-writing position with them last month, and while we didn’t get to the point of discussing salary (I think they decided I wasn’t for them and I decided they weren’t for me more or less simultaneously), I get the impression that their full-time employees don’t do badly for themselves.

5

That was brilliant. Very well done.

Can I get a shout-out for a “fuck you” to the expense and slow grading of the MCAT?

6

Not to disparage your rant, which was brilliant, but the fees for the statisticians do add up. They need to make many new tests a year, with every single question vetted for accuracy, appropriateness, skill level, and potential race/class/gender bias (i.e. could it be answered with equal ease by any race/class/gender). Each of these questions are put into current tests to gague their difficulty in the real world, then extensively statistically analysed. They need to maintain absolute security over all test questions, answers, books, computers, physical sites, etc… from hundreds of thousands of bright students who would very much like to cheat, and Og-knows how many profiteers who would like to help them.

Not saying they don’t have you by the shorts - I’ve payed those fees myself more than a few times - but they do have legitimate expenses.

BTW, I loved the “if Michelle can work alternate Thursdays and Henry only likes to fuck corpses and neither of them is talking to the space alien who is in love with Judy, how many times can Eric and Sandra going out clubbing together before one of them gets decapitated?” questions. Such fun.

mischievous

7

Are you sure it was only $109? If you took it after July 2006, the fee is $130.

A related anecdote: I signed up to take the GRE in September, took it in October, and didn’t receive the PowerPrep CD in the mail until the last week in December. (Yes, I know you can download it from the website but why do they even bother sending it out so late?)

8

Congrats on the GRE, Sampiro! Best of luck with the next step.

9

I don’t believe I’ve ever laughed quite so much at a Pit thread before.

Bravo.

But if Carl was selling meth…that must mean…Urkel was the chemist!

10

A rant after my own heart!! I went through all this hell last summer as I was applying to grad schools: GRE General, GRE Subject (literature), plus TOEFL because I’d done my undergrad at a non-English speaking country. Test fees alone cost over 300 dollars. I spent another fortune in phone bills trying to check my scores and send them to the right schools. The only thing I was thankful for was the fact that the “Tom can sit next to anyone but Deb, because she fucked his wife, the whore, but Jamie must sit three seats down from Dan because Emily refuses to talk to Jane. What is the order in which they must be seated if no one is to have their eyes scratched out?” problems were disposed of before I had to take the test.

Congrats on the 6, Sampiro. I think I got a 4.5 on my essay (which was terrible given I was applying to Literature programs), but my Verbal score was good enough to console me for it. I can’t even remember my Quantative scores - they would have made my math teacher weep, most likely.

11

Sampiro, it’s been a long, long time since I had to take the TOEFL, GRE and chem-GRE. My reasons for going to graduate school in the US were purely economic: in Spain we had an official unemployment rate of 24% (not counting recent college graduates, what a joke), in the USA they paid me for getting an additional degree. There is a big educational fair in the town where I went to college; I saw that it was going to include people who ran TOEFL preparation, went there (it was free for students, yay!) and took one of their practice exams. If I hadn’t thought I could get the numbers required and then some I wouldn’t have taken the tests even: the application process and the ticket to Miami completely ate my savings.

Loved the rant.

12

Great rant. It had a nice beat, and I could dance to it.

Brando wasn’t in Superman II. Because of all the money he made reporting GRE results in Superman, they cut his part and replaced him with Superman’s mom.

13

Sigh. I loved the old analytical section. Scored 800 on it. Then again, I grew up doing logic problems, so I may have had a bit of an edge there. I found the quantitative irritating, since it was all high school algebra and geometry which I hadn’t taken since, you know, high school.

14

Amen.

15

And let’s not forget the humorless drone that mans the testing station. I believe the sign on the wall said something about don’t even think about sneezing, coughing, farting or clearing your throat…
I cannot remember what my exact scores were --but I was in the 98% for verbal/language and the pathetic 50% something for quantitave. The writing I didn’t score as well as I had hoped–6? ( don’t recall). I do recall sitting there for agonizing minutes, woondering whether I should send the result at the end or not. I pressed “yes” and thank god I did–I remembered! I got a 770 on Verbal. Time has expunged the math portion, mercifully.

I always hated those logic problems–who the hell cared? It was screechingly obvious that Jane and Matt and Darcie were complete losers whose only mission in life was to worry about what order they sat down in–honestly, who needed more help? The test taker or those morons?
Well done to all who survived the standardized test hell.

16

I can beat that. I just took the GRE at the end of December, called in early January to hear my scores (well, just the analytical writing section since I already knew the verbal and math), paid the not so high in the grand scheme of things but pretty damn high to this research assistant’s dwindling money accounts, and then found out I got a 4.0 on the writing. Apparently I write at the 32nd percentile. Then I received my scores in the mail the next day. Damn!
Oh, and the only way to do well on the quant section is to tutor algebra/geometry. If I hadn’t done that, there’s no way I would have scored an 800 even with 4 years of electrical engineering under my belt. It’s like they expect you to not have learned a thing in math since high school.

17

Hell, audio --I didn’t learn any of that IN high school! HS was over 20 years ago for me–who the hell remembers the quirks to a parallelogram and that oh-insert abtruse math fact here–I have already forgotten…

When I did take a practice test, COLD, just to see how I would do… I scored so LOW on the math that there was no listing for me. So, I figured I did fairly badly. I have since passed on my practice guide and CD-ROM, so I’m most likely getting the numbers wrong, but the lowest score that I recall being on the math scoring section was something like 11%. I did NOT achieve that.

So, I settled down to study, study, study. Stuff did come back, slowly and with much difficulty. I am so glad it’s over–I am in grad school and have no need for math skills in my program (beyond the basics, that is). Thank you Jesus.

18

I think you’re confused. As everyone knows, Diet Coke is at least 48.66% more evil than regular Coke. So being the Diet Coke of evil actually makes the other companies more evil than ETS. Maybe you meant to say they were the New Coke of evil, but of course, that would violate Godwin’s Law.

19

Then you must be the only five-year Doper who missed this. 38k views.

20

When I had to take the GRE before library school, I had an extra analytical section to help them make new tests. And they didn’t tell me which one didn’t count. Before that, I actually enjoyed logic problems and did them for fun. Never again.