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pianoforte611 comments on Separating university education from grading - Less Wrong Discussion

11 Post author: Stefan_Schubert 03 July 2014 05:23PM

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Comment author: pianoforte611 04 July 2014 01:18:15AM *  0 points [-]

What country do you live in? Aren't the MCAT, GRE, SAT, LSAT etc. exactly this? Colleges have an incentive to make sure that their students with good grades are also capable of getting good scores on standardized tests and indeed they do (in the US).

You've presented a good argument for why external testing should exist when we care about how students have learnt (and they already do exist). But are you trying to arguing the internal testing shouldn't exist?

Comment author: Stefan_Schubert 04 July 2014 10:39:00AM 1 point [-]

I live in London but am Swedish and more familiar with that system really, having taught more there (and having done all of my studies there). In Sweden we don't have GRE's and similar tests. We do have a SAT-style test but that's very general and only important for university admissions. I don't think that standardized tests like the ones you mention are important in the UK either.

It'd be interesting to hear if the situation is different in the US. I'd be surprised if professors explicitly tried to train their students to score well on these standardized tests but am not very familar with what it's like in the US.