I thought it was over. I thought thought that after being accepted to UCSD, I would never have to face a standardized test again. Multiple choice, essay, short answer, anything else — bring it on. Just keep me away from quantitative comparisons and analogies, please. After taking the SAT I three times, the SAT II seven times, and five Advanced Placement tests, I was done with number-two pencils. Can’t all college students identify?
But it was not over. The Graduate Record Examination is around the corner. Those phone book-sized Kaplan prep books are again sitting on my shelf. Most of the time, I’m okay with it. It is just another necessary step on the road to further my education, and I can’t do anything about it. Other times, especially when I have just spent 38-odd minutes on a geometry problem I haven’t encountered since 10th grade, I curse the maker of the standardized test. I shake a clenched fist in the air, scorning the invisible torturer of student souls: “Fie, fie! Your foul invention is ruining my life!”
The object of my much-dramatized laments is otherwise known as Educational Testing Service. Senior year of high school, I read an off-the-cuff alternative SAT prep book, which was, in retrospect, kind of a waste of money (sample chapter: “How to Fill in Your Scantron Sheet”). The introductory chapter, however, was pretty mobilizing in its call to arms against the Evil Testing Serpent. ETS, it explained, was a so-called nonprofit organization that sucked up students’ money to pave its solid-gold tennis courts at its corporate headquarters in Princeton, N.J. We had to beat ETS at its own game by maneuvering through its manipulative SAT in order to attain college bliss. As ludicrous as that sounds, it was very effective in motivating me to study for the test.
In reality, ETS is more like an 800-pound gorilla than like a snake. For one thing, it produces and administers the SAT, the AP tests, the GRE and the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), as well as the California S.T.A.R. tests and a dozen or so other exams. We’re usually more familiar with the College Board, another nonprofit organization, which actually contracts ETS for its SAT tests. Additionally, ETS used to own the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT), but recently lost it to another company. Basically, almost every student in the United States must go through ETS in order to achieve his or her goals. With that in mind, I wondered why ETS does not receive more scrutiny, from students at least.
For example, does anyone know that ETS is anticipated to make about $900 million in revenue in 2004, according to an April 2004 Business Week article? That’s not surprising, considering that they charge $82 per AP test and $112 for each GRE. Starting in January, SATs will cost $41.25, up from $29.50, not to mention another $10 to get scores by phone. No wonder ETS is making so much money!
Rumors swirl around the uses of the profit made by the not-for-profit ETS. The organization sits on a 300-acre site and employs some 2,700 people, from education researchers to number crunchers. According to a 2001 report by educational testing watchdog Fair Test, the last ETS CEO made $500,000 a year. It’s a hefty sum for an organization that’s supposedly nonprofit.
ETS started in 1947 when a group of educational councils got together to plot how to screw over students and make money in the process. Well, seriously, the group’s goal was to construct “a single organization devoted to research and assessment that could significantly contribute to the advancement of education … [and] these founding principles guide ETS today,” according to its history. That’s a surprisingly honest goal — the objective to become an academic monopoly is actually written down, and “the advancement of education” doesn’t suggest concern for students so much as elitist ambition. Its vision details an intention “… to be recognized as the global leader in advancing quality and equity in learning every step of the way.” True, ETS says it seeks to advance learning, but don’t let the selfless language fool you. ETS is like a lot of other businesses — it survives by selling products to customers.
Today, ETS earns 70 percent of its revenue from the mandatory tests by holding what is basically a monopoly (it gets an “A” for sticking to its initial principles!), at least in the college-testing realm. Its tests have a huge, billion-dollar industry — prep books, prep courses, tutoring. And recently, it has also tempered controversy with the revamp of the SAT, in light of accusations that it was not a fair assessment.
That seems to be a fair accusation, considering that most of us never saw a quantitative comparison or six-syllable word before we took our first practice SAT. What puzzled me was that the SAT is a test that measures test-taking ability. Sure, basic skills are required in order to understand the test. But as any savvy college counselor can tell you, the key to the SAT (and GRE, arguably) is a thorough understanding of the form of the test and elimination techniques rather than any real academic skills. Not to mention the racial and socioeconomic inequities that were argued to be reproduced by their tests. Thus, it was probably for the better that the SAT was reconsidered.
ETS will continue to have considerable influence in shaping our undergraduate and graduate careers. The group has enormous, and I’d say underrated, power in the world of education. And I suppose there is nothing else I can do about it except forever loathe those darned three-letter acronyms: GRE, SAT, ETS.
Study hard and take the GRE as few times as possible. You’ll save yourself some trouble and a lot of money. Donate the money you don’t spend on testing to a charity, I say. There are some nonprofits out there that actually need it.
