Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums THINKING BIG About Gifted Education I Really Need Advice on Multiple Choice Testing

Greetings to all,

I really need some advice here.

I am a PG (iq of 170) 23 year-old college graduate who loves writing troubadour lyrics, reading, and researching vociferously in various topics. My interests include working out mathematics proofs, learning quantum mechanics, and studying medieval literature in the original language (namely old Occitan).

I always got extremely bored in grade school and college amidst the tedium and busy work. I love writing papers and coming up with new ideas-which definitely got me in trouble with multiple choice tests.

As an individual with a savant-like memory, I always have trouble on MC test questions for subjects such as neuroscience, government, or psychology because I always unwittingly argue for and against each response. I have miniature essays in the marginalia because of how much I know and scribble out for each MC response from a-d. My ability to recall tremendous amounts of information (ever since I can remember) impinges upon my ability to obtain a correct response; I am unsure of what the professor/teacher sought/seeks--two of the answers always seem correct. I don't even know what to do anymore.

I didn't do well on the English MC section of the GRE either because I over-thought every single question--even though I managed perfect scores on the written section. As such, I need to re-take the exam.

What in the world is wrong with me? Is this common for gifted individuals to have this much trouble taking MC tests in certain subjects? Does this happen to others as well?

YES-- my DD has this trouble, too.

It's the major problem we've had with her virtual school, in fact. Some subjects just seem to be more ripe for subjectivity this way, too-- her very worst problems are in the social sciences, the arts, and literature. Anything where analysis is part of the discipline, because you kind of have to know what level to STOP at.

She has a horrible time getting that right. It's okay if she knows the person who wrote the assessment-- presumably she knows what they were thinking about-- but on standardized/anonymous instruments, it. is. bad.

I have had this problem in the past, although not to the extent you have--probably because I am much less gifted and so fewer alternatives present themselves in my mind, which I guess here might be an advantage And I think that is kind of the trick--getting a sense of what alternatives the test (author) is looking for, and it's easier if you have a way of getting in that mind-frame. Fortunately with the GRE there are probably a number of test prep books to choose from--and you wouldn't need these to master the material, of course, but rather to get a sense of what answers they want. Some test preps are better than others in how well they represent the test itself, so I think the best thing would be if you can get actual old tests with answers and try to figure out the pattern. I did this with the LSAT and the bar exam and it really helped, although I still had a number of questions that came down to 2 good alternatives, but if you can cut that number of questions down you might do well enough. Good luck!

I used to really struggle with this too. I am far from your level of giftedness but I had horrible time with these at first. I did not take my first MC test until I was a Junior in high school (as an exchange student in the US). Until then I grew up with open ended questions, test questions that simply asked for the right answer and either you knew it or not, and essay type of questions. When I first started taking MC tests it was horrible. I felt like I had a ton of reasons to find almost every option a possibility under certain conditions. The more I thought about the answers, the deeper I got into it and simply ended up lost! I still remember failing my first MC test (American History) because I just couldn't find the right answers! If the test had directly asked "what year did ... happen?" or "who fought at ...?" I would had been able to spit out the answer right away! But seeing multiple choices just made me think that ALL of them were possible!

Then I found my own strategy. I took advantage of the type of testing I grew up with where we simply had to know all the topics covered at school in and out and figured that this should be EASY! I KNOW the answers! I don't need the choices! I learned to NOT look at the choices. I read the question and without looking at the answers in my mind I fill in the blank / answer and only then I look at the choices to see if my answer is one of them. Usually it is. When it's not than I need to think about the choices. But even then you can just dismiss the most ridiculous ones and think about the ones that are left. These days when I need to take MC tests, I know that unless the question is worded poorly (which unfortunately happens quite a lot!) I will get the correct answer without having to think twice.

MK13, that is the same strategy that DD finds works best for her.

Usually one of the answers is a simplification/variant of her (mental) answer.



She's also found that just relaxing and enjoying the amusement of the "chicken-brain" answer or two is a good strategy because it prevents her from getting in too deep. That's my hypothesis, anyway-- that doing a reality check using those really out-there wrong answers is a good idea. They wouldn't be there if some of the target test-takers didn't go for them, YK? That really helps to keep perspective on the correct "level" to be thinking about the questions.

Hello MK,

Thanks so much for your advice--this does seem very effective and I will have to give it a try =] That does seem like it caters to advanced levels of analysis.

DBat,

thanks for your input as well; I will certainly give this a shot. I am so glad to hear this from other intelligent individuals with similar experiences =]

HowlerKarma,

I really appreciate your feedback as well. For the longest time I imagined I was unintelligent or simply lacking in critical thinking because I could not "perform" as well as I desired on tests like the SAT,ACT, or GRE.

As a teenager and young adult, I could speak three languages, switch from 13th century lexicon to 19th whilst attempting to recreate facsimiles,and learn Quantum Mechanics, yet I felt incompetent because of how I fared on standardized tests like the aforesaid ones. I felt "stupid" by these measurements in that colleges would view me as lacking. I never took AP tests because of my fear of these examinations and my overall lack of self-worth.

Again, it means a lot to me to have other competent individuals--such as yourselves--to indicate that I am not alone in overcoming this dilemma.
Thanks for your feedback!

I've thought a lot about standardized tests. I'm glad that you opened up this thread.

One aspect of multiple choice (MC) tests that drives me demented is that they can't measure sophisticated thinking. This is because students typically have an average of 60-90 seconds to answer a question. With this approach, there is simply no room for asking students to think about ideas, be creative/make connections, and solve something. They can't; there's not enough time. So they measure trivial stuff instead.

One thing I've observed is that the tests appear to compensate for the triviality by writing questions and answers in weird ways. This is especially the case on the verbal sections, and is more problematic now that analogies are gone from the SAT and GRE.

As an example, getting the right answer will hinge on noticing that a single word in the question or answer choice has a specific meaning, yet could be read in a general way. They accomplish this by using weasel words, synonyms, and vagueness. In other words, they try to trick you. This where one can get into trouble: if you don't recognize what's happening, it's easy to start analyzing and over-analyzing. In the MC test world of thinking, this approach is foundational (IMO) because there isn't time to ask you to write a meaningful essay or prove that something is equal to something else. If you can't grade it by running an answer sheet through a Scantron machine, it won't appear on an American standardized test. This is due to our love of industrial solutions to non-industrial problems.

Another point is that some of the questions in the verbal sections don't actually have bona fide correct answers. This explains why some of passages can be clearly understood, yet the questions can be very difficult. It also explains why the directions say select the BEST answer, not select the RIGHT answer. As a concrete example, see the notorious question 7 in the hare and pineapple passage.

Some years back, the testing companies came under fire for writing ambiguous questions. Rather than writing questions with answers that were clearly correct, their solution was to change the wording of the directions to "select the BEST answer."

You presumably know that the testing companies write questions and then test them on live tests (these are the unscored questions or sections). I don't know if this is true or not, but a commenter on the pineapple/hare debacle wrote that the "correct" answer for the ambiguous questions is the one that the most high-scoring students pick. Again, I don't know if this is true or not, but I've spent some time in the education area, and it certainly wouldn't surprise me if it were.

Compare with these exams: Paper 1 and paper 2 of the Honours level Irish Leaving Certificate in 2012. Here's an English paper. These exams are graded by humans, not Scantrons, and the humans are typically academics (not low-wage people frantically reading SAT essays in two minutes or less with explicit instructions not to mark down for factual mistakes). Read this. It will make you feel better.

Val thank you so much!

This really made my entire night. The essays are hilarious!
You are awesome! We as a society have much to learn about what encapsulates "learning."

Nah. I think that we just had much to 'forget' and we've made a good start on that.



ETA: I just showed DD the most outrageous of those "perfect" SAT essays. She thought it was... awesome. A thing of amazing... well, something. Kind of like a bonfire of immense size. Or a black hole.

And I quote;

"I... can.. spout B.S. like a FIRE HYDRANT... and clearly, they. will. LOVE. IT."

Howler Karma:
i feel that the more knowledge you have and the more mental artillery you have in your cerebral armory the worse things are on the SAT.

Has your daughter taken these tests before? What about you?

I attended the Lycee Francois Mauriac my junior year in high school when I wanted to drop out of HS due to boredom.
My parents thought the education system might keep me "in line" over there due to my slowly declining motivation for anything. It really was interesting and required an impressive knowledge base where gifted and academically inspired students can thrive if they so choose. There is no such thing as a MC test there.

I "studied" for the GRE essay for as long as it took to read some advice online: Write as much as you can. Just keep writing.

Formula: Your opening paragraph needs to make your main point and set your tone. Then begin the next paragraph with an idea and fill in details. Lot of details. Repeat. Repeat again. Keep repeating until you have enough time left to write a final summary paragraph. Summarize what you said, and Presto! You are done.

(Result: Perfect score.)

My eldest went to a local French school for many years (the teachers were all employed by the French school system and the followed the national curriculum). Their system is quite simply much better than ours.

I rock standardized tests, personally. (nope, no false modesty here... my PSATs, SATs, and GRE's were all pretty much stratospheric and I certainly didn't spend much time on prep, and took them once each)

I play it like a game, though, and don't worry about "truth" in the conventional sense. I've always just looked for the best answer and not gotten hung up on the right one. It's like playing Jeopardy or Trivial Pursuit or something-- it's not a test-- it's a GAME.

I had more fun with the old GRE analytical section than any other single afternoon in my life. VERY sad to see that go. I used to buy GRE prep books just for the (generally lightly used) section with all of those fun logic puzzles in it.



DD on the other hand tends to do BEST when she is moving at warp speed. She took her PSAT in about an hour and forty minutes and scored 99th percentile.

Similarly with the SAT practices she's done so far. Generally she can run through the entire thing in about 2h. The grammar section (the ten minute one?) takes her about 90 seconds flat (for a perfect 14/14 every time).

The problem is that she makes calculation errors on the math sections when she is moving that fast, so we have to work with her on that. It's a matter of "tuning" things to optimize her scores. If she slows down for the improvement in math, her critical reading scores are likely to drop slightly. Same thing as on the PSAT.

What advice do you have to me?

You both are very impressive--I envy your ability.

Try going faster. That's the only thing that seems to work for DD.

Or make it into a game using test-prep materials to test different strategies there. That worked well for me on my GRE's. I finally figured out what they were actually after on those stupid analogies that way.

Val, judging the French school system by that school would be like judging the American school system by the American School of Paris. Pretty meaningless in both cases.

I completely agree about the flaws of the US multiple choice based exam system. I also have a few rants about the shallowness of the essay/debating methods being taught here. But the French system has its drawbacks, which show most glaringly (as in the US MC system) when grading "soft" subjects: grades vary, sometimes a lot (A to F) with the person judging them.
http://m.lexpress.fr/actualite/soci...correcteurs-pour-quelle-note_899958.html

Ahhhh-- like figure skating. Or dog show judging.

Yes. Well, we have that in the American system, too, sadly. So all in all, I'd say that the French gain more here than we Yanks do-- at least they get something good in exchange for the subjectivity in grading.

Be careful what you wish for in eliminating that subjectivity, actually... because that leads to rubrics. And if you give a grader a rubric... it's going to need more details. A LOT more details. And once you do that...

well. You read Val's link, yes?

Hi Sia,

You raise a good point in the inherent subjectivity of all these measurements.

HowlerKarma,

I think the largest problem is that standardized exams and educational systems have trouble accountin/ for and engaging with truly gifted students.


The classrooms and assignments (even in college) appear to cater to the average student rather than the ones seeking to go above and beyond, along with the ambitious gifted students(unless you account for directed study classes).

Average and below-the-norm students have an easier time than the ones truly seeking knowledge for its own sake.

I see the OP as a similar problem in our family. My eldest and to a lesser degree my young DS, although both gifted in math, both had great difficulty estimating. It just didn't register with them why one would want to estimate when one can quickly figure out the exact answer. The concept of estimation they had a difficult time grasping.

France has a single national curriculum. All French schools follow it. If you order distance learning courses from France, you get them from the government and they follow the same curriculum as the schools.

Teacher quality may vary (though not nearly as much as it does here), but the basic idea is the same in every school in France. My son learned pretty much the same poems and the same math algorithms as kids in Montpelier and Paris and Lille. When French students finish what we call college-bound high school, they all take the same exit exam.

So while one can talk about differences between individual schools and teachers in France, the system is the same everywhere, and I can compare it.

ETA: Comparability is actually an important part of the French system. With a single national curriculum, people can move and know that CM2 or whatever grade will be the same in the new school as it was in the old school.


Whereas if there are six private schools and one public district in a single American city or town, they will probably all follow different curricula. Public schools in neighboring towns may have different curricula because of having different school boards.

I think it's important to consider the target audience for every test. When you read each question, you put it through a filter that makes it simple enough for the target audience to understand. As others have noted, these multiple choice tests aren't about thinking deeply, they are about quickly applying knowledge and understanding within the grasp of the target audience, and doing so reliably.

Dad 22:

Thanks for your help

That is an excellent point. I think this relates back to the misconceptions on gifted individuals.

I read somewhehere else that these tests relate best to preparation rather than intelligence. Knowledge of the test itself carries much weight, of course.

Hmmmm...

Granted, my experience of the US school system is limited to one school, one district, one state, and doesn't go above 3rd grade yet, but I still think you have too rosy a picture of the uniformity of education in the French system. And that's a system I have 20 years of experience with as a student

There are bad teachers there, and good ones, and OK ones. The curriculum is the same (and that includes public and most private schools) but the textbooks are not, and implementation of that curriculum can be seriously diluted depending on the demographics of the school you attend.

So... IMO, not so different from CA public school and state mandated curriculum here. Even before Common Core. So far my kids have had better luck in teachers than I did at their age.

The curriculum might be slightly more demanding here in early grades, slightly more there by the end of high school (discounting AP classes). But you have to understand that by high school the lowest performing students will have been tracked completely out of the system.

I see some pluses to the French system -- less reliance on the tricks of standardized testing (to loop back to the subject of this thread) is one. Proper (ahem!) funding is another: no bake sales needed.

There are boatloads of cons to go with them, and some you will have had no experience with whatsoever at a private school in the US. Parental input is completely unwelcome, for a start. You drop your child at the gate in the morning, pick her up in the evening, and that's it. Unless your child is raising hell in the classroom and you are summoned to school there is no talking to the principal either.

And in this venue... Consider a school system where schools throughout the whole country are supposed to go in lockstep. Now picture a GT, special needs, or (shudder!) 2E kid thrown in. And weep. Differentiation? GT programs? Dream on!

Not that I am bitter about it or anything...

Which one?
I was familiar with the US testing references, and the Irish stuff is very similar to questions for the French baccalaureat.

I have found Jed Applerouth's experience hilarious, definitely not one of the pitfalls of the French system. Where the issue might be more that you think Rousseau was a pompous, hypocritical windbag, and you get your French/philosophy baccalaureat essay excoriating his morals, intelligence, and writing abilities corrected by a teacher who believes him to be the greatest thinker in the history of humanity. That's when lack of concern for actual content is something to yearn for

Ahem... not that I would know from personal experience, or anything...

I find both systems frustrating, for different reasons. I do have a list of things I need to make sure my kids learn where I find the US system sorely lacking.

We don't use muliple choice as much here either. When I have had to do them I find the best thing is to go fast and try not to think too much. I also use the answer without looking then look technique as much as I can but I have had multi choice tests that I didn't know the content of in advance (job interviews etc).

LOL SiasL-- my daughter wrote just such an essay about Thoreau, actually. Her conclusion was that such people OUGHT to be jailed, and not just for tax evasion. Well, not "jail" per se. A Dickensian workhouse would do quite nicely. Also-- that if she had written the derivative work The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail, it would have had a very different ending.

Maybe with him helping Muir break trail somewhere in the high Sierra, or something. Heehee. She figured that Thoreau was the product of an upbringing that clearly didn't include enough genuine privation or hard labor.


Oh, and everyone knows that Moliere was far superior to Rousseau in the thinking department.

thanks for all of your feedback--

BTW, why do you view Moliere to be superior to Rousseau?

I will grant that he was a formidable playright.

I'm a fan of social satire. The more obnoxious and edgy the better-- and to do it as performance art simultaneously is just... sort of.... delicious. In the ironic sense, I mean.


But really, my point was that it's all down to personal preference at any rate. Which was, at least I think, probably what SiasL's essay was most emphatically intended to point out to start with.

Well, not completely a matter of taste. On the morals part I never understood why we were asked to drink up the theories on education of a man who abandoned his own children. The sexism was just the icing on the cake.