"Pubkeybreaker" wrote in message
oups.com...

Herman Rubin wrote:
In article . com,
Fred Goodwin, CMA wrote:
Herman Rubin wrote:


What we really need for university admission, and even
for high school graduation, is a comprehensive examination
of sufficient length, with no multiple choice questions,
and examining understanding.

What is sufficient length? A 3-hour exam in each of English,
Foreign Language, Math, History, Government, Biology, Chemistry,
Physics, Art, Music, Phys Ed etc. etc?
You would also need exams for many *different* foreign languages...
Most states have a Phys Ed requirement for graduation.

Where are Universities going to get the money to pay for people
(or even find enough people) to grade these exams? Ditto for
high schools?

What consitutes a "comprehensive" exam? Not all students study
all material to the same depth. Would you expect that someone planning
to be a music major study math, chemistry and physics to the same
extent as a potential physics major? Or vice versa? You would have
to have *many* different exams depending on the type of program
followed
in high school. This would be prohibitive to administer.

The alternative "one size fits all" comprehensive exam would either
set
the bar too low, or not properly separate the students applying to
Princeton
from the students applying to Podunk University. Or do you propose a
separate exam for each college? Now we are REALLY talking about
"expensive"!!

Well, this is what schools of music do, both at the baccalaureate and
post-baccalaureate levels. You do an audition/interview and take tests in
theory and literature (and, depending on the major, a scholarly writing
sample), which determine not only your admission but your placement. Most
good music schools do not accept the Music AP exams or the GRE as valid for
people majoring in the field and prefer to do their own testing, and even
the SAT/ACT is very secondary to the student's interview when it comes to
getting accepted to the school of music, although it may come into play in
getting into the college or university hosting the program. The real expense
comes to the parents and the student, who have to travel to do these
placement interviews/auditions on site instead of just sending in an
application.

I strongly suspect that an oral exam/discussion given 1-1 would have much
the same benefit a music audition/interview does, if schools decided to do
it that way.