Asymmetrical Information

Funny you should blog this. I have had similar thoughts regarding taking the GED myself. These were stimulated by working with people who dropped out of high school to go into drug rehab, and then faced the necessity of getting a GED, and the occasional late-night GED prep course on educational TV.

As another freakishly good test-taker, I wondered how I'd do on that one, cold, 30 years after my B.S. and 10 years after my M.S.

I'd love to hear how you make out.

The question might as well read "can a 15 year old girl pass the GED with no preparation"? And the answer, in many cases, is "yes". Michael Dell said in his book that he tried to get his diploma (or GED, he wasn't really specific) in 3rd grade. And many high schoolers graduate with enough Advanced Placement 4s and 5s to enter college as sophomores or juniors; surely they could have received some sort of equivalency degree years before.

As I see it, a GED may be useful as a signal to employers that the degree-holder is not a complete idiot, that he at least made an effort to educate himself and is literate and can multiply and divide. However, it also signals failure at a relatively easy task (base-level high school classes) the first time around, which implies not only a bad background but also any number of other unwelcome effects of that poor start.

Shouldn't the weird part be that someone who apparently didn't pass high school be in college?

Did I miss something here?

I have a GED. The GED is easy, given two conditions:

1) You are a good test-taker. Clan Galt sounds like Clan Chevre.
2) You know the skills it tests. Basic reading comprehension, formal grammar, basic arithmetic in the context of story problems.

Shouldn't the weird part be that someone who apparently didn't pass high school be in college?

Did I miss something here?

Yes -- the article. Read it.

At any rate, what good is an HS diploma these days, anyway? If you did well, you get a diploma; if you didn't do well, you may still be able to do enough to get a diploma anyway...and that qualifies you as having, what, a 98.6 body temperature and a semi-regular heartbeat?

Those who excelled can wave their GPA, AP test scores, teacher letters of recommendation, extra-curricular activities, or private prep school letterhead at the necessary scholarship and collegiate authorities. The diploma itself, on the other hand, is a sheet of paper stating that you made it through the US public education system. Yee-haw.

The diploma itself, on the other hand, is a sheet of paper stating that you made it through the US public education system. Yee-haw.

And in some cases, survived the US public school system. I know that was my big worry sometimes, but I went to a school in a somewhat tough neighborhood.

Most people seem to not be good test-takers. That puts those who are at an inordinate advantage over them. In my younger years, I put overly much emphasis on my ability to take tests, and so did not pick up some good information until later. In any case, the good test-takers too often get to scoop up most of the available good deals. It was only later, when I actually wanted to learn some things that I paid more attention to stuyding.

The GED is a necessary evil, in the sense that most older people, out of high school for a while, are not logistically able to go through school to earn a diploma. Yes, it is weird to be able to go to college without even a GED, much less a high school diploma.

I've met a guy who was tenured MIT faculty (before his 3 start-ups distracted him enough to relinquish his tenure) who had no degree past junior high. He got sick of high school and got into Caltech young, but then bailed on Caltech to fly jets for the USAF who later assigned him to Lincoln Labs where he started on a CS research track that even had him the director of the MIT CS dept for 3 years. At some point he was also a professor of physics.

This is surely not a common (or even reproducible) "weird path" to not finishing high school, but it is kind of a fun story about the ability of right-place-right-time circumstances and sheer genius to overcome issues related to non-standard academic certifications. There are surely many more stories of high school hackers dropping out and mining Internet gold in the late 90s.

Why might they currently be trying to establish employability...two words: "gambling problem". ;-) No, no. it is doubtful any of these people would take & tout GEDs. So, this is at best a not so relevant tangent. :-)

Do ya' think that the lawyers of today are any better than in the era in which a person who passed the bar exam could practice law, and eventually become Chief Justice of the United States' Supreme Court? It wasn't all that long ago, after all, but to be fair, given the quality of Earl Warren's legal reasoning, perhaps one should pause before answering in the negative.

To be more clear, Warren never attended law school, and California, when Warren was a young man, did not require a law school degree to practice law. One only had to pass the bar exam in order to hang out one's shingle.

I, too, find test-taking to be pretty easy, and I have often wondered, if I had not been forced to actually attend law school, whether I would have practiced law. Then again, given how most lawyers I know are not very happy in their occupations, I don't have any regrets.

Given the HS grads who cannot read or arith effectively, I have often wondered why the GED is not considered the superior document, as it at least certifies some competence in basic skills.

Jane, surely you know you'll pass with zero difficulty. You might even shatter the record score, if there is such a thing.

Imagine taking the SAT today. If you didn't get a 1600 or close to it, it'd likely be a result of the dreaded "stupid mistakes" people usually make (I knew that - why didn't I put that down?). You're more knowledgeable now that you were at 18, and the levels of basic skills the GED and SAT interrogate are not so high that you should expect atrophying of your aging brain-muscle to be a big factor.

If you did well, you get a diploma; if you didn't do well, you may still be able to do enough to get a diploma anyway...and that qualifies you as having, what, a 98.6 body temperature and a semi-regular heartbeat?

Well, it signals that you aren't a complete jerk-off. You might not be qualified to do anything *yet*, but a high school diploma at least shows that you have a basic ability to show up on time, do as you're told, and learn -- a person without a diploma probably is, or was, incapable of at least one of those three things, and is therefore probably not a very good choice for hiring.

Dan -- that may well have been true a generation ago, but too many of today's schools award diplomas for showing up, or not. A 30% absentee rate is not enough to kick you out of school, because NOTHING is, short of felony. And I think they would still carry you on the roles then, if they could. School districts get paid (by their state) based on attendance, so they are incented to let kids keep showing up when they feel like it. This is probably a bad long-term strategy, even financially, but short-term, it pays. (It also pays tofake the attendance records.)

And the purpose of school is not education, but rather to provide good income for school district employees, especially the unionized ones.

If all of a school's "graduates" were to ALSO take the GED, I wonder what the success rate would be? And obviously, I am not talking about YOUR school, which is certainly different....

I had occasion to take an SAT-like test recently when I applied for a job at one of those SAT-test prep places. I did well enough to merit the next round of interviews, which I guess means I did very well because they don't take you if you don't score high enough. But it was not an easy test. When is the last time you had to figure out sines and cosines, and use all that other useless geometry crap? I don't know about you, but the last time I did was when I took those damn tests the first (and last) time.

The GED is a different thing, it's the basics, and I'd expect anyone commenting here to ace it. The SAT? Not so much, at least the math parts.

I'm sure you could pass. You have to make this interesting though. Can you pass the GED and pick up a semi-literate Italian boyfriend in the same 3 hours? Can you pass the GED drunk or hung over? Can you eat 2 large chili dogs with extra cheese and onions and pass the GED immediately after? Can you pass the GED in a bikini and heels? Can you pass the GED left handed?

The GED is normed so that only 60% of h.s. seniors can pass. It's really not that hard if you can think straight, or at least logically. It's mostly a test of thinking skills. So yeah, it's easy if you can put ideas together in a logical way, but no, it's hard if you can't think for yourself.

Just what are test taking skills?

Is test taking an attitude?

1. In Islamic cultures only foolish women take tests (demonstrating they can read); or do better than the average man (demonstrating they need a husband who can beat sense into them).

2. In many countries only the unwise do well on tests because above average people are quickly levelled. Just as the wise peasant never shows his money or possessions, he never reveals his intelligence. It is better to be shunned as stupid than killed for being precocious.

3. On today's streets no one wants to be a wise guy unless he's got the guns to back it up. Absent firepower, keep out of sight and out of mind. Act dumb.

4. Girls act dumb to make guys feel smart.

Tests are culturally sensitive. You'd probably flunk them ones dey poor people take every day.

> You'd probably flunk them ones dey poor people take every day.

How is that working out for them?

Will Allen writes:

To be more clear, [Earl] Warren never attended law school, and California, when Warren was a young man, did not require a law school degree to practice law.

For you, taking a GED would be like shooting frozen fish at close range. We've all read the precious, self-indulgent text that sort of endeavor generally produces, hinted at by your questions about #2 pencils and so on.

If you want to try something new and interesting as grist for your keyboard, pick something truly out of your ken, so to speak.

If you haven't done it, factory work might be a good choice - if you can find someone to hire you for, say, a week.

Ken

"But then, I come from a family with freakishly good test-taking abilities; if achievement were determined solely by standardised test, Clan Galt would rule the world."

Not so fast...first you must conquer the Foreign Service exam...

(evil laughter receding downward)

Beyond anything regarding the level of difficulty, the real perversity here is the notion of college as a substitute for the GED!

That's like someone decided not to go on welfare because "it's too scary for me to think that I might lose the check on the way to the bank or check cashing center. I hear that these things called 'jobs' have a 'direct deposit' thing. That's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna get one a' these here 'jobs.'"

About that freakishly good test-taking ability:

Since Charles Spearman's work in the early 20th century, we've known that when any problems (questions, tests, etc.) intended to measure cognitive ability are presented to many different people, there is a positive correlation between the results achieved versus any of these problems (etc.) and versus the others. He hypothesized an underlying fundamental mental characteristic, which he denoted "g", as responsible. Problems that produce especially strong mutual correlates are said to be strongly g-loaded.

People who are said to be especially good at taking tests are people with a lot of Spearman's g. Today we know it as IQ. People with this trait tend to enjoy good results over a very wide range of experiences far beyond schooling and mere test-taking.

Probably you are right to call your clan's special ability "test-taking." If you call it IQ, which it certainly is, people will frown.

Ken

If you want an exam that's an actual challenge, try this one:

http://examresults.soa.org/files/coursefm_1105.pdf

If you want even more of a challenge, this one should do nicely:
http://examresults.soa.org/files/Fall2005ExamM.pdf

Am I the only one who thought the Foreign Service exam was incredibly easy? (At least the first written part - I crashed and burned in the interview round.) Then again, I was an IR student back then so perhaps someone without that background would have had a more difficult time.

I know I aced my GED. On the other hand, I got a 30 on the ACT when I was in sixth grade, so it was only to be expected.

The better challenge would be to take an exam based on material you haven't looked at since high school - I'm thinking the Regents exams in Biology, Chemistry, physics, or Math III/B/Trigonometry/whatever they call it today.

I think I'd fail chemistry and physics, even though I did pretty well on them at the time.

Which just goes to show you, our high schools should be offering more classes that teach practical skills, like becoming an electrician, mechanic, plumber, hairdresser, bookkeeper, gardener, etc. Physics, chemistry, and trigonometry are all pretty useless to 95% of the population.

SamChevre-- That first exam looks like one of the CFA exams or an intermediate capital markets test. I don't think it's difficult at all, and neither would a quarter of Wall Street. If you gave me four hours and a TI BAII+, I could pull a 90%.

The second exam seems more challenging, and I don't doubt for a second that actuaries are smart people, but it's just applied algebra, arithmetic, and statistics, with a smattering of calculus. One needn't have a graduate degree in differential topology to figure out the problems.

I took the California Proficiency, CA's equivalent to the GED, in order to escape from high school a year early. This was some 20 years ago, but I still recall one question as typical:

If 2/3rds of your body weight is water and you weigh 120 lbs, how much of your weight is water:

20 lbs
40 lbs
60 lbs
80 lbs
100 lbs

I wanted to answer '20 lbs-- I'm very thirsty', but it was multiple choice of course. This was, as far as I can remember, quite characteristic of the math section of the test.

I took the GED in high school, freshman or sophmore year. Never got results back; they were using us as a control group. But it was insanely easy at the time. I could have passed it in 8th grade.

Bob,

The first exam (FM, Financial Math) is not really difficult material; I would expect anyone who took a finance class in college knows enough to pass it. It is however, a difficult exam, largely because of the time limitations; it's a 2-hour exam.

The second (Exam M, Mortality) is similar; it's not that the material is particularly complex, but the questions are tricky and the time limits really bite you.

I was suggesting those exams as a good "challenge" because I thought the material is reasonably accessible to someone of Jane's background--not as "most challenging exam for mathematicians" or anything like that.

Why not try the GMU Econ Ph.d. comprehensive exams while you are at it?

The military requires a diploma or a GED to get out of boot camp. (we have classes during boot camp for those who aren't qualified yet)

I know of at least three folks who became legal to join the military, joined, and got their GED with a bare-bones grasp of English. I'm talking to the point where reading this post would toss 'em for a loop. (One was a *doctor* in Argentina before he joined, and none of them were _stupid_, but the only one with English that's better than my Spanish was our Real Polish Marine, Blicharski.)*

*no insult to Poles; it refers to the way that there was a Marine called Ski in every blessed class, but ours was right out of Poland. I could even pronounce his name to his satisfaction by the time we graduated, at least two out of three times.

So, you're good at tests?
Try this one:

http://biosystems.okstate.edu/Fun/Qualifying.htm

How about taking one or more of the AP exams?

Everyone here reads this blog, and I doubt we're doing it for a class project. Is it any surprise that people who read this stuff for fun can pass these tests in their sleep? We don't exactly make up the target audience for diploma-equivalence tests.

This isn't even an amusing question. Yes, you can pass the GED. Heck, if you remember high-school math you can pass the GRE. I started back to graduate school after being out for 25 years and had to take the GRE recently. If you can write for The Economist you can do well on the reading and writing portions. Granted I'm an applied mathematician so the math portion was a piece of cake, but everything in it is pre-calculus.

Interestingly, the constraints imposed by having to take the GRE online nullifies some of the common test-taking skills. Each question must be answered before you can go on to the next; having answered a question, there is no way to go back to it; there is no way to look ahead at questions. All of these reduce the ability to practice good time management.

You'll be fine.

I took the GRE (which is, hopefully, much harder than the GED) cold 14 years out of high school and absolutely maxed it: 800/800/6.0.

It's hard to forget things if you're a good test taker and a good writer, which you apparently are.

I should hope you'd find the GED absurdly easy. I'd be more interested to see your reaction to taking the GRE again. In my somewhat checkered academic past I've taken the beast thrice and, contrary to the expected result that education 'wears off', I did better each time.

However, I also thought that the test had been somewhat dummied down each time. The first time I took it you had to bring your slide rule and actually calculate the answers to some of the math problems [yeah, yeah, fortunately they'd just done away with the clay tablets, I was never very good at cuneiform]. The second time you were allowed to use a calculator. The third time no calculation was required to arrive at the answers. I can't say that I saw an equivalent dummying down of the verbal section but I also improved on that each time.

I suppose the question is: Am I getting smarter, or is the GRE getting dummer, or is it just getting different, and what does this say about the state of higher education? Has anyone else out there taken this or similar tests multiple times over a number of years and noticed a similar trend?

The GED is a necessary evil, in the sense that most older people, out of high school for a while, are not logistically able to go through school to earn a diploma.

Gold words, Jane!
Fully agree with you.

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