I remember taking the ACT in high school and thinking that it didn't really test my ability or competency in determining how well I could do in colleague. In fact, I'm a crappy standardized test taker even when I have studied for them. I always get average scores, yet, I've done well in college.
My engineering bachelor degree got more difficult as I progressed through it, yet I did better grade wise. I ended up with a 3.334 gpa out of 4, a solid B+ for a tough degree.
In engineering grad school I did absolutely average on the GRE. The result was a gpa of 3.87 out of 4 in top engineering graduate program.
Then I took the GMAT for business school and again did dead average on it. Yet, I completed the 17 month program at a big 10 university in Michigan, while working as a full time engineer and finished with a 3.6 our of 4.
What say ye about the value of standardized tests? What purpose do they fulfill? I would argue they are used only because it provide a single simple number that is damn easy to filter people with. But what good is a filter if it does a shitty job of correlating to the success of the student and its educational performance... You risk filtering out people who could end up doing well and achieving great things in that field when they enter the job market.
I agree standardized testing is about providing a filter that focuses on a very, very limited set of skills. We all have our own talents and very few of them are actually useful in a school setting.
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Awesome comic! Boy does that make your point.