(Originally posted on LiveJournal)
I’m just indulging in musing on certain types of numbers, here. These are not reflections of great research, comparative study, or objective consideration. What I have to say springs entirely from a subjective view point.
What set me off was running across a blog entry (posted by an acquaintence on his blog — my first visit to his blog, since usually we are fellow-posters elsewhere on someone else’s site). He had made a short post about his significant other: she had taken the GRE in preparation for going after a Ph.D, and she’d scored a 1300. He was proud of her. (Rightly so.)
But it set me wondering about numbers and the meaning we give to them. It’s been a little bit on my mind because in the course of tidying up my apartment, I came across (again) the folder that had a number of my elementary school report cards and some other test reports.
My friend’s blog entry reminded me of my own taking of the GRE, when I decided to go after a Master’s degree. I was, at the time, a senior at the University of Houston, and decided to try and get into the Grad School in English at the University of Texas. Yes, it was the only school I’d applied to. I had looked at other schools (especially given my interest in medieval studies), but balancing out issues like cost and weather, I opted for UT for utterly pragmatic reasons. The lure of the best medieval programs gave me choices of McGill University (Montreal), University of Chicago (Windy City, hello) and the State University of New York at Binghamton (yet more winter!). I’d been in Texas long enough not to really want to deal with snowy winters again.
In any case, the UT English department didn’t care about your combined score on the GRE, they just wanted candidates to have scored at least a (not exactly sure on this) 640 on the Verbal portion. That’s what it said in their catalog.
University of Texas Tower
Now, we’re talking about the paper and pencil era, long before the computerized test was put into place. (Yes, I’m admitting I am that old.) I remember approaching the test being very relaxed. I knew being anxious would not help me with the test. But that January Saturday morning, with others waiting to take the test, I knew I was being decidedly odd-ball in my relaxation. Others were wound up about the importance of doing well on the test for their future, and so had that restless energy. Me, all I aimed to do was get a good enough score on the Verbal portion to get me into UT. So, as we waited to be brought into the test room, I was sitting in the hall reading Dorothy Sayers — Gaudy Night, I think it was. When we got into the test, I proceeded along comfortably. And I was very amused that when we got to the “Math” (or Quantitative) portion, one of the sections was actually about logic sets – something I’d actually studied in a formal logic class I’d taken. I breezed through that, happy as a clam.
My score came in and it was a bit above UT’s cut off (though I honestly do not remember by how much), and I was happy with that. It was all I cared about. The total score didn’t mean anything to me (and again, although I recall the general level, I don’t now recall the exact score). All that mattered was that the score was good enough to get me into UT, and I did get into UT.
Early in the first fall semester in Austin, the Graduate English department had a social mixer for the new grad students to meet other grad students. I drifted into a social cluster of students who were variously second year grad student in Master’s programs and some Doctoral students. Somehow the admission process got brought up, which led to the matter of scores on the GRE. I mentioned my combined score — of 1400-something. I wasn’t thinking much of it. But my comrades all paused and looked at me a bit astonished.
I’ve never paid much attention to the effect of high scores, especially on other people. All I’ve ever cared about was doing “good enough” for the immediate purposes at hand. And in the case of the GRE, I knew my combined score had been greatly advantaged by my familarity with logic sets (it was a relatively new addition to the test at that time, in fact – if it had been all-math for real, my score would not have been so high). But I really did not understand why they should be so impressed: we had all gotten into grad school, so they also had had to meet the same standards I did. None of us were dummies by any measure. So why was my combined score so impressive to them? I just didn’t get it.
All my life, it’s been that way. First it was a matter of doing well enough to satisfy my parents. When I recall how I, subjectively, only cared that it was “good enough” for them, I am amused to look at the report cards objectively now and note the consistent high grades. Well… there were the “C” marks for penmenship in third grade (when children switched from block letters to learning to write cursively).
My life in the 90th percentile (Heh, that sounds like a title) had occasional blips. When I was in tenth grade, the student body was given “differential aptitude” tests. Three of the four sections dealt with spatial recognition and analysis, and the last section was basically clerical evaluation. I scored high in the spatial sections, but got a 37% (one of the few exact scores I do recall receiving). I hated alpha-numerical sequencing, because I found it utterly boring. So it amused me later in life, that my jobs before getting work in entertainment were all clerical ones. I’m actually rather good at pattern recognition, I’m just not much engaged by it in many cases.
I don’t mean this to be all bragging — just setting up the background for my reactions to Big Important Numbers.
I had one friend who would often trot out her IQ score (it was high). I was always bemused by this. I realized that she did it as sort of an insecurity reflex. But I would also wonder how many people go around knowing what their IQ scores were. Mainly because I did not know what mine was, I suppose. But by the time I met her, I had also encountered plenty of people who were not great test-takers but who were excellent at their work, who were bright and engaging. So the numbers never really impressed me.
At some point, High Numbers stopped being a way of measuring actual achievement, and became an object in and of themselves. It puzzles me — but then I’m an archer, where the high score can really only be achieved by being excellent. You can’t fudge it. You can’t be “a good test taker” who is clueless about practicing anything tested on. In archery, you take aim, and either you hit the higher scoring areas of the target or you don’t. The scoring is an absolute measure.
Does the Aristocracy of High Numbers exist because humans are inherently responsive to hierarchy in any form? Are we responsive that way? Sometimes it seems so, what with our Best Sellers lists. I do think that we sometimes mix two types of Numbers and treat them as if they are the same: there are the High Numbers of absolute evaluation (the fastest runner, the fastest swimmer) and there are subjective “best” High Numbers (mistaking things like high books sales with high quality writing: “It sells well, so it MUST be the best written thing!”). The one I can respect as genuine achievements; the other I am indifferent to, since I often delight in more off-beat or ecclectic things.
Heh. I guess what all this rambling boils down to is, “Don’t tell me what your score is, show me what you can do.”
And I admit I’m inconsistent — my Credit Rating Score is in the “excellent” range, and I work to keep it there. Sometimes you do have to bend to the Aristocracy of Numbers.
Comments
sartorias – May. 10th, 2010
I think it’s hierarchy, but also the attitude toward the tests has changed. When I was young, there was no studying for SATs. They just happened. Likewise, they did not tell kids their IQ scores. I only found out about scoring high because my parents were invited to a special assembly for parents whose kids scored over 160. I guess colleges were recruiting at that meeting–the parents wouldn’t even tell me what happened at it. (My dad had decided where I was going because every other LA college was full of pinkos and hippies, so that was that.)
Now, helicopter parents start worrying about SATs as soon as a kid hits high school, and enrolls kids in tedious “study for the SAT” camps, and make them take practice tests over and over, in an effort to fine tune those scores. Talk about anxiety!
scribblerworks – May. 10th, 2010
Yeah, the current state of studying and prep boggle my mind, and I’m glad enough to be out of it.
I still don’t know what my IQ scored at. Though I suspect something similar happened in my case as yours. My parents were always VERY ready to foster any of my interests, sometimes (it seemed to me) more than they did my siblings. But they were also good parents generally, so it didn’t really feel like favoritism.
sartorias – May. 10th, 2010
I wouldn’t be the least surprised if your folks got the equivalent–in my case every semester’s graduating class had 1000+ students, so they did everything in industrial “cattle mover” assemblies rather than private meetings, but your folks might have been called in for college counseling and of course you would never hear about it.
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scribblerworks – May. 11th, 2010
I agree with you about the way schools put importance on those numbers. And I certainly understand the need to get a certain score on the test (since I’ve been there myself).
But I too saw some students in graduate school who did well on the GRE, but who didn’t manage in the classes as effectively. It was one of the things that startled me in my first semester in grad studies: when the professor asks a grad student, “What do you think about this?” they really did want to know what you thought and were not so interested in the “standard regurgetation.” 😀
Numbers as motivation, though? Well, yes. “A target number of pages written on my script!” “X number of words done this week!”
I guess we can’t quite get away from them, can we? I guess my thing is that I just leave them were they were of use. What use is there to me know in keeping hold of my SAT or GRE score? Heh. Although I suppose they do impress some people. But — be it understood, I do not scorn those who do well, and celebrate their achievement.
Aren’t humans strange creatures? (Oh dear, I seem to be in a flippant mood today.)
