When applying to graduate school, Emily Martin found the process to be daunting.
Scores from standardized tests are weighed heavily, and the full personality of the student is often unable to be fully measured.
“I think it was really frustrating that they based most of the admissions on standardized tests,” said Martin, who finished her undergraduate studies at UCLA this year and plans to attend Notre Dame Law School in the fall.
Martin said that standardized testing scores are not the best measure of a student’s ability to succeed in postgraduate studies.
“It doesn’t show your commitment, it just shows how well you can do on a test,” she said. “There are those who do well on standardized tests who don’t necessarily have the commitment for grad school.”
A new evaluation system recently launched by the Educational Testing Service could alleviate these stresses by ensuring that applicants’ personal attributes are also weighed heavily in the graduate admissions process.
Called the Personal Potential Index, the supplement to the Graduate Record Examinations requires faculty to rate students according to six “non-cognitive” dimensions, including knowledge and creativity, communication skills, teamwork, resilience, planning and organization, and ethics and integrity.
“We see this as something that is going to help level the playing field,” said Mark McNutt, manager of strategic external relations for ETS.
“The PPI option will broaden opportunities for those who don’t do as well on standardized tests,” he added.
McNutt said that the graduate community has been looking for a way to measure applicants’ non-cognitive attributes for many years.
“The challenge was how they would be measured properly in a way that would be valid,” he said.
Striving to meet this challenge, ETS started development on the Personal Potential Index about a decade ago, McNutt said.
Many students may think that the new evaluation system will help them to present graduate schools with a more complete portrait of their abilities as a student. Martin said that the Personal Potential Index could be a beneficial way to personalize the process of applying to graduate school.
She said that because teachers work so closely with their students in undergraduate studies, their evaluation of a student’s ability to succeed in graduate school could be vital in the admissions process.
“That would have been really helpful for me,” she said.
However, there are other students who are not as enthusiastic about the new system.
Ryan Roberts, the vice president of internal affairs for the UCLA Graduate Students Association, expressed concern that the new system was designed by the Educational Testing Service to increase revenue.
“The Educational Testing Service, the makers of the GRE, continue to find new and innovative ways to charge more and more money for a test that is ineffective and that has no real bearing on graduate school success,” he said.
However, McNutt said the new system will benefit schools greatly by boosting the number of applicants who complete their graduate studies.
He added that the developers of the system believe that the system’s effectiveness will make it a requirement for most graduate schools within the next few years.
Students already taking the GRE will be able to send their results on the Personal Potential Index to four schools at no additional cost, and the system will be available to others with a charge.