One complaint you often hear about standardized tests is that they’re racist or sexist. The complaint is usually framed this way:

The average score of group X is higher than the average score of group Y, so the test must be biased against group Y in favor of group X.

This argument is used to show that standardized tests are skewed in favor of men over women, or in favor of whites over blacks and latinos, or in favor of asians over whites, or in favor of northerners over southerners, or who knows what. (Here’s an example of the argument being applied to the “gender gap” on the SAT, from FairTest.org: http://www.fairtest.org/facts/genderbias.htm)

It’s certainly true that a standardized test can be racist or sexist by design. It’s also true that previous versions of the SAT, in particular, included racist and sexist test items.

But the major standardized tests have been changed many times in the past few decades, and no credible argument can be made that the tests are still racist or sexist in themselves . . .

full text: Discrimination in Standardized Tests

A student recently sent me an email that included the following:

Thanks again for your help. I took the LSAT twice (with a two-year stint in the Peace Corps somewhere in between). The first time I prepared with a Kaplan course. The second time I took a Testmasters course and used some Powerscore materials to prepare for the test. In the end, I thought Kaplan was a complete waste of time

 . . .

full text: Making a Thousand-Dollar Mistake

This is the last article in my three-part series on guessing strategies. We’ve already gone over guessing on the SAT and guessing on the LSAT, so now it’s time to tackle the weirdest guessing situation of them all: the GRE CAT . . .

full text: How To Guess On The GRE CAT

I get a lot of emails from people asking me what the best way is to prepare for the so-called “vocabulary” questions on the GRE Verbal section. My answer surprises a lot of people . . .

full text: The Best GRE Vocabulary Tool I’ve Ever Seen

A lot of my GRE subscribers have written to ask me about the ETS’s recent decision to cancel its planned overhaul of the GRE.

The decision is certainly puzzling to those of us in the test-prep industry.  Always ready to knock a testing company, Fairtest.org released an article called “New GRE Cancellation Reveals ETS Flaws,” which you can find here.  The article says, with little substantive proof, that the new GRE was just a chance for the ETS to make more money.  Fairtest seems to think that . . .

full text: No GRE Changes For Now