<http://www.nytimes.com/> The New York Times I hope most of you heeded my
advice to NOT take the January test. If you did take it, and had this
problem, please let me know ASAP.
I think that the more students who complain about this the more pressure
will be on the MCAT folks to offer a retest!
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January 30, 2007
Computer Gets It Wrong in Medical Admission Test
By KAREN
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/a/karen_w_arenso
n/index.html?inline=nyt-per> W. ARENSON
When Daniel Sonshine, a senior at Brown
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/b/brown_u
niversity/index.html?inline=nyt-org> University, took the Medical College
Admission Test on Saturday, he was asked to read a passage on robotic fish
in the verbal reasoning part of the exam. Then he was presented with a
series of questions about songbirds.
This was not a trick question; it was an error.
"I was completely distraught," Mr. Sonshine said yesterday. "I was
struggling to stay focused, but I was not focusing."
He was probably not alone. About 800 students who took the exam, known as
the MCAT, encountered the mistake.
Another kind of problem surfaced in the College
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/c/college
_board/index.html?inline=nyt-org> Board's SAT exams, also given this past
weekend. At least one student in South Korea had a part of the test before
it was taken by 326,000 other students, according to the Educational
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/e/educati
onal_testing_service/index.html?inline=nyt-org> Testing Service, which
handles security for the exam. Raymond Nicosia, privacy protection officer
for the testing service, said it was working with investigators in South
Korea to find out "what the student had and who else had it."
Mr. Nicosia said scores for students who had prior information about the
test would be canceled. At this point, he added, "all the information we
have is that it is a localized situation to Seoul, South Korea."
Robert F. Jones, a senior vice president at the Association of American
Medical Colleges, which oversees the MCAT, generally viewed as the most
stressful of the admissions exams, said the error on that test was
"something we regret." "No more than 800" test-takers of about 2,500 were
affected, he said.
About 50,000 people take the test each year, some more than once.
Mr. Jones added that the error appeared to be "a test publishing problem,"
but that he did not yet know how it had come about.
Last weekend was the first time the MCAT was administered only by computer
rather than by paper and pencil. The medical college association announced
in 2005 that it would move to an entirely computer-based format beginning in
2007, and that it would work with Thomson Prometric to administer the test
at its computer testing centers.
Jodi Katz, a spokeswoman for Thomson Prometric, declined to comment on the
error.
Mr. Jones, of the association, said he expected that students with the bad
test would get their results within 30 days, like other students, because
their scores could be extrapolated from the rest of their responses.
"It will not affect their scores," he said.
But Mr. Sonshine said he thought the painful experience could affect how he
had done, and his admission to medical school.
"We are going to get screwed a little bit," said Mr. Sonshine, who was
taking the test a second time because he was not satisfied with the score he
received on one section of the exam when he took it last summer.
He said he spent three weeks of his Christmas vacation studying for the
exam, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, and took five computerized practice
tests. When he got to the exam on Saturday, in New Jersey, he whizzed
through the first section, on the physical sciences, he said. But his
confidence evaporated as he began the second section, verbal reasoning.
Using a technique he had learned from a test coaching company, he looked for
a passage to read that seemed easy, to gain momentum. Unfortunately, the one
he chose was the one on robotic fish.
"I read through and took some notes," he said. "Then I went to the
questions. 'The male warbler cries for the female warbler when...?' I'm
starting to freak out."
When he saw that the next question was also about warblers, he said, he
started scrolling frantically through the other sections to see if they were
misaligned, too. He then started trying to answer what he could.
"Seven minutes were already gone," he said. "Every fiber of my being is
telling me to go outside and say something. At the same time, the clock is
ticking, and I haven't answered a question yet. I struggled through the
rest."
Mr. Jones said that after some students raised questions during the exam,
all the Thomson Prometric testing centers were notified and were advised to
tell students to ignore the problem section and not to worry. But Mr.
Sonshine said he had not been told about the problem.
Some critics of standardized testing said yesterday that while there were
advantages to computerized testing, they were not surprised to hear of
problems with the MCAT.
"Every time a test has been computerized, there have been huge glitches,"
said Robert A. Schaeffer, public education director for FairTest, an
advocacy organization that opposes widespread standardized testing.
Mr. Schaeffer said the SAT problem grew out of the College Board's practice
of reusing its tests.
John S. Katzman, chief executive and founder of the Princeton Review, a test
coaching company, said the problems with the SAT last weekend were a
reminder that security and operational problems "happen even with paper and
pencil."
Mr. Jones said pilot tests last year, including one in August in which about
3,000 students took the computerized version of the MCAT, "went very
smoothly."
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