GRE and PPI test – another experiment

Wednesday, 9^th November 2011 – Personal experience – permalink

By chance a friend of mine told me, that some people from psychology are doing some research and are seeking for people willing to participate. I was, because I enjoy beeing part of a research.

GRE, Source: www.ets.org

What has the research to do with GRE test and PPI? The traget of the research is to determine some qualities of students at Maastricht University. GRE® stands for Graduate Record Examinations and PPI for Personal Potential Index, both done my ETS®. GRE tests are used by universities as an adminision requirement, some universities are also using GMAT (Graduate Management Admission Test). The biggest advantage is its decentralization, meaning that you can take it in your home country at several places and you get universal result you can use anywhere. It's computer based test that acording to (Wiki) aims to measure verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, analytical writing and critical thinking skills.

As any other research, there was also offered a compensation for the four hours spent with the test and questionaires. I got 25€ voucher, that can be used at several places. Nice. And I will also get the official GRE results!

My opinion about GRE and GMAT

Usually, the test costs about 200 USD, so If I will fing some use of the results, also saved money. On the other hand, I went there without any preparation at all, as I was told about this event only the weekend before and I got the confirmation email, that I can take a part in the experiment on Monday.

The research is not only consisting of taking the GRE test, but it's more long-run. I will also get some questionaires in about a month. But for me it was quite an experience. A lot of of my Czech friends need result from GRE or GMAT test, as they are applying for university abroad. So except the language certificates, they need to show they study abilities. I heard about it that it's similar to the SCIO tests, that are used by Czech universities in adminission process for undergraduate aplicants. I also had to take sucha test and actually it is quite similiar. But the problem is, that I am not native English speaker, I haven't spent any longer time in any English speaking country and the verbal reasoning part is based on small differencies and nuancies in language. It's not easy to determine them in my mother language and I need to do that in English! So I came across a lot of words that I have never seen, sometimes my anwers were based really on pure guessing. Sure, I was a bit nervous and also scared as I was not sure if I got at least some of the answers right. I hope I did . The quantitative part was more fun. Basic calculations based only on high-school math. But I didn't manage to answer all of them – one time I was not sure about the language and the last question I was just about to click on the answer, when the time went up. Damn it.

I could create my own opinion about these test, as I finially took it. I am not sure, if they are really suitable for its purpose. Well, I am skeptical to the extent, how detailed the questions should be. Mathematical excercises are universal, words for expressing most of the short problems are well known. But I also understand, that universities need to know, if the student is capable of understanding a bit complicated text in english as the student will also study in this language. After seeing this, I am not sure, if some more intensive study of english would help in large extent. There are simply too many words and the test are covering very large amount of topics.

But overall, I like taking tests, it's always a challenge. And if the test has not any important meaning to me, the more comfortable I feel when I am working on the answers. I enjoyed myself, but also exhaused myself. 4 hours of full concentration is something. I wish I came across another research like this. It's fun . And last note: result I will get, cannot be used for application for university, only to enhance my CV, as I only get some PDF file with the result at the end.