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GRE Computer Science Exam Canceled For '02
An anonymous reader writes "This may be a bit dated, but the Educational Testing Service has canceled the Computer Science GRE exam for November due to the fact that students were sharing and posting exam questions. One has to wonder about the immediate effect this will have on grad school admittance, as well as the long term changes that will likely occur to the tests as a result."
If the sharers are so savvy, they can no doubt move this info anywhere they want - why only cancel the local tests? Seems everyone who wants this stuff will have it in short order.
Unless the tests have regional forms in addition to the other multiple forms, this is either useless or a symbolic slap on the wrist.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
First, scores may be used at the low end as a first sort method. People who score below a certain cut off might be eliminated from further consideration. This is often done to limit the number of applications that must be examined.
Second, scores may be used at the high end to get considered for fellowships and other academic awards.
Most schools do not use the scores alone, but consider the whole package. Still, scores and GPA are used most everywhere in the initial sorting of applicants. If you are on the admissions committee of a CS department, and there are 3 of you, and there are 300 applications for 20 spots, you are going to want to winnow the pile in *some* way.
Keep in mind that standardized test scores do an ok job of predicting success in school at the high end, but do a very poor job of predicting failure in school at the low end.
"Education is not preparation for life, education is life itself." John Dewey
like I said, I'm applying and I really don't mind a temporary loss of competition
That's a good point. Presumably, the people taking the test who sharing information are applying to graduate school themselves. I'd assume they'd also have a fairly good idea of how competitive the admissions process can be these days. How do they benefit by helping other random internet surfers improve their scores? Wouldn't that just dilute the value of the original taker's score in the applicant pool?
Sounds a bit like shooting ones self in the foot to me.
At the graduate level, however, you're supposed to be doing research. How do you define what knowledge is prerequisite for doing research in computer science? You can't -- all you can do is interview the students, get a feel for what sort of projects they are interested in, and decide if those projects sound as though they would be worth a degree.
Things probably are different in the USA. I should disclaim that I'm in Physics&Astronomy, rather than Computer Science, but I suspect many of the same things apply.
A student who goes to grad school knows that he wants to get into research, and, yes, that's what grad school is all about. However, it's the rare student who really knows exactly what he wants to do when he goes to grad school. Many will have some idea as to what field they want to go into-- e.g., in Physics, they may know if they're interested in astro, nuclear, particle, condensed matter, or something else-- and a few students will know what profoessor or project they want to work with, but it's the rare student that knows beyond that.
Part of the purpose of grad school is so that students can learn, in an apprenticeship sort of mode, how to go about doing research. As such, judging them on the ideas for projects they have isn't really fair. Yes, it would increase the quality of grad students, as only the very top ones would ever get in. However, undergraduate education does very little to prepare students for that sort of thing, as that is part of the purpose of graduate education.
On to the GRE's. In Physics, there *is* a core set of knowledge that "any" Physics graduate student ought to have. Indeed, most schools have core courses (or core exams) which the students must take beyond that, to get the basics of the field, before they can be admitted to candidacy (at which point, yes, it is based partly on their presentation of what they will do for their research, and thereafter mostly all they are doing is working on their research). This admission to candidacy will typically come after the student's second year of graduate school. The GRE's give some vague indication (up to the general utility of standardized test, which is a whole different debate) of how well prepared a student is to survive those first two years of graduate classes.
-Rob
At the graduate school I went to (SUNY at Stony Brook), they didn't care about your GRE in their subject, becuase they could teach you that. They cared about the Math and English, because they didn't want to teach you that.
Cite a fucking source for this, and you might sound convincing. Otherwise, it's just hearsay and rumor, like 99% of the 'facts' on Slashdot. Not that I have the smallest fucking problem, but I'd like to see some proof.
With personal interviews, you get a lot more discretion in the interviewing, and you can get a lot more depth of information, so things are a little less arbitrary -- but then you get the biases of the interviewers; someone who one interviewer might think is brilliant, another might dismiss as a hack. So you get deeper, more nuanced information, but less uniform and differently arbitrary.
Don't forget that in the US, most students coming into Ph.D. programs are coming straight out of undergraduate, so there is a real question of making sure everyone has the same background, and the students aren't launched immediately into research the way they might be in a system where you do a Master's first. Also, in a field like CS, you have people coming in from Math, CS, Physics, or Engineering background, so a `level laying field'-test is a useful tool.
The GRE provides four numbers -- a score on a subject test, and scores on three general tests -- logic problems, basic mathematics, and english skills. All of those can be useful pieces of information -- a bright person who can't read or write is unlikely to be a good TA or, for that matter, work well in groups where reports need to be written often. A person who knows tonnes about their subject but can't solve simple logic problems is unlikely to be a really creative researcher, etc.
When you have 500 people applying to your department, and you can only accept 20 or so students, you need a quick way of pruning the list to 50-100 or so, who you can then start looking at in more detail. For that, you need a broad, uniform measure, which is exactly what the GRE provides.
I don't know any department that bases its acceptances solely on the basis of the highest GRE scores, and those who did probably deserve the students they get. (A Yale and Cornell study found that GRE scores corellated well with the students coursework grades, but poorly with overall sucess as a grad student). But it is a useful piece of information, and helps sorting through huge pools of applicants. Like any standardized test, the problems come when people take the tests too seriously, usually by assuming that the tests measure something that the test doesn't even claim to test for.
Yes - I realize the order of the questions - and even the selection - varies from form to form. There wouldn't be just 1 person memorizing question #2 - there would probably be 50. So you might get 10 different answers 5 times each - but the point is that you would get the questions.
I believe the questions are rather heavily recycyled - that is part of the benefit of hte tests since you can use the recycled questions to compare results across multiple editions of a test, or between years. If every test were completely unique, it would be harder to determine whether one edition was harder than another. Sure, you can look at the mean, but that assumes that student performance does not change from year to year. In fact, one of the best uses for standardized tests is to test the educational system itself by seeing if this is in fact the case.
I am a foreigner studying in US CS Grad School right now. I must say that it is more correct to take the _best_ students from whichever country they are, since they will add value to the department by doing better quality research, and also enhance the classroom experience. And the US Schools, in fact, really do that today - they take the best students.
I just feel that as we import more students, educate them, and then subsequently export them back to their country we have just devalued our own country a little bit more by shifting knowledge and skills to foreign lands.
Thats clearly happening. Lots of skills, knowledge, and technology is being transferred from the US to outside. But for a developing country like from where I am, this is important and very useful, and helps our country develop. Even otherwise, its good for society, since all countries should develop equally, right?
Also, many times, the foreign students do not go back to their country, so the USA benefits by having a high-skilled person added to the community...
So the present situation turns out to be beneficial for the US as well as other countries.
I have found a solution to Riemann's Hypothesis, but have run out of spac
In my experience (I was born here, my parents are from Taiwan), Americans are just not as interested in graduate school. Asians seem to value higher degrees (especially Ph.D.'s) much more than Americans.
To be honest, unless you're interested in academia and research, there isn't much reason to get a CS Ph.D. From a job/financial standpoint, you might as well start working straight from college.
Heck, when I was in college it seemed like a lot of the CS majors were just there for the job prospects. Those aren't the type of people who go to grad school. You have to have a real passion for the subject to want to slog through N years of grad school. Or you have to really want the letters after your name. Otherwise it ain't worth it.
Merit-based admissions are difficult. How do you compare the ability of different students?
As you rightly point out, the GRE scores are largely affected by how much preparation was made (e.g., by working through cheap guides). It is thus a measure of both talent and motivation (and perhaps free time available).
The GRE is good, not because it is perfect but because it can complement other imperfect alternatives. Grades are very difficult to compare and letters of recommendations all tend to be extremely positive.
I completely disagree with the scam suggestion. It is certainly true that the 3rd party makes money on the test, but are you suggesting that the universities get a commission - and that that is the reason why they use the test?
Tor
I'm shocked that such a blatantly racist statement can get modded up on this board.
I'm sorry you were rejected from a whole slew of grad schools. I'm sorry your abilities, your knowledge and your intelligence were deemed inferior to a whole bunch of people inspite of the natural advantage you held as far as the language and accessibility of technology is concerned.
I'm sorry, universities are not run as a charity system. Most scholarships are paid for by industrial sponsors who want to see research results from their money.
I went to grad school at a top-10 school for CS. There is a whole slew of scholarships and opportunities that are available for US citizens and residents which are just not there for foreign students. As a result, many US students were admitted over much better international students. The few foreign students that were there were the cream of the class - and outdid most of the local students in terms of what they achieved for their professors and for the prestige of the university.
Mmmm.. Donuts