ETS - Crushing my hopes and dreams since 2002

The people who know me in real life know that I truly only have one goal - to overthrow the ETS and establish a system for judging education that is not a standardized test. 

For those of you who do not suffer test anxiety and argue that it's the only way are probably not as familiar with the ETS, or the Educational Testing Service, as I am. ETS is actually a non-profit organization that claims to give a "public service" to the education system. I'm uncertain as to exactly what this public service really is. 

Doing rough, hyperbolic math, I've realized that by the time I am finished with my education (I want a PhD, folks) the ETS will have taken what could be my first year's teaching salary from me. 

ETS creates everything from the AP tests, to the SATs, to the GRE, to the TOEFL, and everything in between. ETS kept me out of my first choice colleges and graduate schools, despite having a good GPA and personal references. In fact, the only graduate school I was accepted to was in London where they didn't care to learn about my standardized test scores. Shepherd was okay with my GPA, and didn't really want my GRE score, either. 

Every time I take one of these, I tell myself that I won't get freaked out, but I do. These tests do this magical thing called deciding the course the rest of my life will take after the test is over. If that sounds exaggerated, go talk to the Elon University admissions folk. Their first letter to me said I needed to improve my SAT score to improve my consideration. That was it. Graduate school admissions people will tell you that you can kick your course work's proverbial ass during your undergraduate career, have a flawless personal statement, but if someone else has these same qualities and can regurgitate information on a multiple choice test better than you...FAIL, try better next time. 

A few years ago the University of Maryland took a pool of their freshman class and split them up into groups based on students accepted with high, average, and low SAT scores. At the end of the students' first semester, they compared their overall GPAs. Lo and behold, there was no correlation to how well the students did on their SAT to how they performed their first semester of college. 

Shock, truly. 

The rooms are probably the worst part. When I took the Praxis I over the summer, I drove there popping a few breath mints because they're supposed to stimulate the brain and help you focus. I had one in my mouth as I was going through the sign in process and I had to either chew it up or spit it out before I was let into the room. Please, tell me, how do you cheat on a test with a breath mint?! The rooms are incredibly quiet and filled with the clickety clack of computers and there are giant sound canceling headphones for your sanity's pleasure. You can't bring in a sweat shirt, you can't look around, you can't talk, you can't sigh, you just vomit random information all over a computer. There is no rhyme or reason to the questions they ask you which is why the ETS has come out and said you can't study for their tests. How does a test you can't study for show how prepared you are for college where you're, you know, supposed to study?!

Someday, I will find the monkeys and hamsters that sit in a big building on Mount Olympus and set them free from their test creation and scoring bondage. All high school students will praise me, and I will finally be popular and I will completely revolutionize how kids get into college forever. And then I'll dance, because, you know, a revolution without dancing is a revolution not worth having. 

I'm going to step off my soap box and study for a test I can't study for. I'm going to fill my heart with rainbows, ponies, and flowers and have something more pleasant to say tomorrow, or the next day....