Longest Running Thread EVER

[Old Man]

We don't have one of those, but some friends do; that one is a very large cat, and with nigh on ten toes per foot his feet are ... excessive.

 

Bet he's awesome on the piano.

[Cancer]

They don't have a piano (which is too bad IMO because I agree with you).

[L. Marcus]

Last Saturday, I took Högskoleprovet -- our SAT. I've taken it four times before, and have always done well. Last time was nine years ago, when I got 111 out of 122 points. The facit for this term's test got released today -- I preliminarily got 146 out of 160 points.

 

I've still got the knack, I guess.

[Cancer]

It's a talent. I have it too. Pity I haven't had to take a test like that since 1977.

[Pariah]

There's a series of such tests called Praxis exams that teachers have to take for licensure purposes. I've taken two in the last ten years: One for Chemistry and one for Principles of Learning and Teaching. I scored top 15% on both.

 

At the end of my current program, I'll have to take one for Physics, too.

[Bazza]

Good luck, may the speed of light be with you.

[Bazza]

I tried studying for a physics exam once, but found the theory relative.

[Old Man]

I have taken exams for Physics.  There was one called the "GRE" that ended my career in astronomy before it began.

[L. Marcus]

What was it on?

[Cancer]

A desk, typically.

[Pariah]

[Cancer]

Thankyouveramuch

[L. Marcus]

... Wut.

[Cancer]

Just the usual disruptive diagonal run through the standard cognitive flow.

[Old Man]

What was it on?

 

The physics exam?  So it was on... physics?

[L. Marcus]

Physic is pretty big, son! Could you be more specific?

[Cancer]

Ironically, at least a couple of astronomy graduate programs are getting rid of the Physics GRE requirement. Washington is making it optional. Texas has said they will not look at it even if sent to them. This is ostensibly because it's a biased test, in that men do better than women on it, and that there isn't a clear correlation between that exam score and how you do once you've got a PhD.

[Pariah]

I had an Education professor in college who had done time at UT-Austin, and his research subject was standardized testing. His conclusion was that standardized tests at ANY level--elementary, high school, university, post-doc, whatever--are really only good for one thing: Predicting how the student would do on other standardized tests.

 

The more I administer these things as part of my job, and the more I have to take them, the more convinced I become that he's dead right.

[JohnnyAppleseed098]

I had an Education professor in college who had done time at UT-Austin, and his research subject was standardized testing. His conclusion was that standardized tests at ANY level--elementary, high school, university, post-doc, whatever--are really only good for one thing: Predicting how the student would do on other standardized tests.

 

The more I administer these things as part of my job, and the more I have to take them, the more convinced I become that he's dead right.

I am starting to agree. I hate taking the overwhelming amount of tests. Just saying. My life is becoming filled with, "You should study for this test in 4 days", "No, study for my test in 6 days." It seems like the teachers are vying for my attention.

 

Seriously. I have resorted to just not studying. Do you know what happened? My grades improved! I now am a straight-A student and am about to take the SAT for the National Merit Scholarship Program. I am surprised. The less and less I take tests, becoming more and more able to focus on the actual material, I am starting to enjoy the class more. AP U.S. History is easy because I am history buff. AP English Literature is a bit tough, but I am still making a 95! AP Statistics is the easiest AP class i have ever taken. AP Physics is relatively easy because I am really good at math and conceptual science.

 

The reason these classes are so easy is because they don't have many tests. I think that each student should be in school for 36 weeks and take one test every 6 weeks per class. That will result in a total of 48 tests in one year for me. I had taken at least 75 tests last year. This year, I have taken 15. I have been in school for 10 weeks this year. 

 

Just saying. There is NO reason for a student to have to take over 100 tests in a year (at this rate, I will take exactly 48 tests, imagine that!) Traditional schools have given kids and teens too many tests. If I could change anything at this point, I would, but I cannot, so I leave it to fate. 

[Bazza]

It seems the more tests the more measurable outcomes of educating students...which seems a bit if a strawman.

 

As Pariah stated, the better one does on standardised tests, the more predictable that one will do on standardised tests. In other words, education is focused on quantative not the quality of education.

[Old Man]

Physic is pretty big, son! Could you be more specific?

 

I'm not being more specific because the GRE isn't more specific.  It covers all of undergraduate physics.  That's part of the reason I didn't do so hot.

 

 

Ironically, at least a couple of astronomy graduate programs are getting rid of the Physics GRE requirement. Washington is making it optional. Texas has said they will not look at it even if sent to them. This is ostensibly because it's a biased test, in that men do better than women on it, and that there isn't a clear correlation between that exam score and how you do once you've got a PhD.

 

Figures.  But to be honest the universe was seriously hinting that astronomy was not for me.  I struggled through my entire physics major, due to a combination of adding it to a CompSci major late, crummy professors, and physics being damn hard.  A summer internship at Goddard was cancelled at the last minute.  I couldn't find anyone to sponsor a Space Grant project.  Correspondence with Chris McKay actually got lost in the mail (it showed up a year later).  The planetary sciences program was in an entirely different division so I couldn't take classes there.  IFA literally refuses to accept undergrads from its own school.  So after taking the GRE twice and maxing out at like 70% I put my astronomy career on pause.  It hasn't been unpaused since.

[Bazza]

Astronomy stardom is not for you.

[Cancer]

Eliminating the GRE as a criterion has a hidden implication with which I am not entirely comfortable.

 

That means for these grad programs you are selecting applicants based on their undergrad grades, their letters of rec, and (I think) some application essay.

 

Let us leave aside the facet that I hate application essays with a sustained heated fury not encountered in this universe since the quasars all died out, and I am willing to spend eternity in Hell if I get to be the entity who administers at least some of the torments for the scumbucket who decided that those were a good idea.

 

So now you're down to letters of rec, and interpreting undergrad grades.

 

This is a situation just crying out for cronyism and the good-old-boy club. If you know Joe -- or, these days, Zoe -- at another institution, you two trade favored students and lock out others who aren't from your club.

 

If you have a 4.00 student from Lower Backwater State whose letters all say "best student we've had EVARRR!1!!! Really!" there will be a powerful temptation say, "Well, that's Lower Backwater State, and we know they don't get anyone any good." (These days that gets damped out if the student is first-generaterion-in-college or has other social engineering attributes, but not everyone at Lower Backwater State is going to have those attributes; also, there are populations who go to Lower Backwater State because they have family pressures/expectations of staying home and providing labor and/or income to sustain the family. How you'll ever got those students to cross state lines and come to a grad program is a Really Hard Question that no one has an answer for.)

 

It was to combat this good-old-boy stuff that these "objective" standardized tests were formed. Yes, they're biased in ways that perhaps weren't apparent then (or rather, the biases were congruent with some of the biases in the selection committees of the day when these were first used). But the biases are not completely unknown now, or would be known if the guilty-of-incestuous-rape ETS would suck it up and do the statistics and come out with estimators for the biases. It's possible to do that, though you will have snide comments about that being an academic exercise not worth doing. However: the test is created and run by and for academics for their own academic purposes, and "academic exercise" is what we do. It shouldn't be like Congress, where the groups in power manipulate the rules for how the Census can be performed to diminish the impact of populations they want to keep under the heel.

 

Anyway ... when you decide to fly without admission criteria without some form of external control, you are setting things up for some group to grab power and lock out those they don't like and promote those they do. I.e., a return back to Politics As Usual long ago.

 

And ... I am cynical enough to believe it likely that is intended.

[Cancer]

In other developments, I asked the lab manager to get out the Geiger counter and the vaseline glass from the radioactives locker, in order to slow down a couple of students eager to have fun with the two tubes of gallium that came in today.

[Cancer]

Going to be idle over the weekend, as a friend is too ill to go to the group's traditional gaming convention any more. Since he can't go to the convention, we bring the convention to him. Second of these starts tonight. His name is Bob, so ...

 

... I'm off to BobCon 2.