Reply to Prepping/Scamming the Cogat

Forum Index » Advanced Academic Programs (AAP)

Reply to "Prepping/Scamming the Cogat"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]GoCAT:  Follow the money $$$

It is a multibillion dollar industry in the US (WPPSI,GoCAT, SSAT,ERB, ISEE, ACT, SAT, AP, GRE, MCAT, LSAT, Toeffl,WISC, MSA, Pearson, Washington Post, Princeton review, Aristotle, Kaplan, State tests, Explore, Raven...feel free to add to the list

Do I have to show you how to read stock market reports, too?

[/quote]

I am going to pick on one of these tests listed TOEFL:  The test of english as a foreign language.  First of all no american has to take it.  The test is designed to determine if the applicant to graduate school is proficient in english, that is will he or she succeed in the US graduate program.  What has happened to the test is that, since the US graduate schools are the best in the world, students want to do well.  So, they study for the test.  They learn what they need to ace the test.  In the 80's and 90's when I was involved in the grad school application process, we admitted students we would get applicants from other countries (China mostly) who had near perfect TOEFL scores.  They also had perfect GRE scores,  etc.  Based on the TOEFL scores, we assumed they could speak english So some owuld even be assigned teaching assistantships.

The students arrived at our school, but could not speak nor understand english.  They could read english.  But they could not be a TA.  We had to rework our classes such that they were doing non-teaching jobs.  Ok....They would take there classes, cram for the tests, to well in the classes.  But, when it was time for their qualifying exams, they largely failed....in fact, none of that cohort graduated.  This was in my small program.  Talking to faculty at other universities, the story was not unique.

So that is the danger of prepping for the TOEFL:  it put the students (in there 20's) in a position where they would fail.   Prepping for the CogAT probably has less risk but definitely less gain.  My belief is that any kid that can be prepped to a good score would do fine in AAP.    But the score is not what is getting them in AAP anyway.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics