Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Literacy Test

Ever think you know it all? Want to know if missing out on that expensive Ivy League education made a difference? You can find out right now. Just click here and then click on the big [Take the Quiz] button. Once finished, you can compare your answers, right and wrong, with the results of students attending some of the nation's top colleges. And "Fear not!" The best score the average Harvard student could muster was but a "D+." It was downhill from there for the rest attending any other college in America. I'm sure you will do better.

Like Megan McArdle, whose mention of this gem on her blog led me to the quiz, I aced this exam. Unlike McArlde, I cannot claim that I genuinely knew all of the correct answers, but I recognized errors in enough of the other possibilities to choose the correct answers. (Thanks to that quirk, I always do well at multiple choice tests.)

By the way, parents of the ultimately college-bound might want to view the chart listing the top colleges and universities where students, on average, knew less after four years of attendance than they knew on entry.

7 comments:

reader_iam said...

Just stopping by, checking in.

Randy said...

Thanks, doing fine - getting a little crowed at my mom's house, what with her caregiver, my niece, and now me sleeping over. We'll rearrange things tonight or tomorrow. Unlike previous experiences, I feel well enough to be on my own at home.

Peter Hoh said...

Fun exam. I did well enough (A-), though I let myself get fooled once or twice when I assumed that the obvious answer was probably there to trip me up, when it was indeed correct. Like you, I did well on questions where I did not know the answer, but was able to eliminate the incorrect answers.

I was slightly unclear about the college results. Were the same students tested 4 years later, or were both freshman and seniors tested at the same time. The latter sugests that perhaps the colleges had become more selective, and that the incoming students knew more than their seniors.

Randy said...

Good question, Peter. My impression is that they were not the same students because that would eliminate the benefits of random selection.

Peter Hoh said...

To clarify, I meant the same pool of students, not the exact same students. That is, did they give the test to randomly selected freshmen, and then 4 years later, give that same test to a randomly selected group of students from that same class, who would (presumably) be seniors.

Randy said...

That makes sense to me, Peter.

tjl said...

"the incoming students knew more than their seniors"

Maybe it's because the incoming students were more attuned to taking standardized tests?