The True Test

It's exam period, and for those unfortunate souls who haven't closed out their academic year, tests are very much on the brain. It's fair to say that these students should be studying. But for more and more students, the old-fashioned process of reviewing notes and books from the whole semester has become as worthless as blowing against the wind.

Am I saying that exams have become harder? Far from it. Instead, it seems like an increasing number of professors are choosing to hand out in advance the questions which will appear on their exams.

Many students consider this an act of mercy, compelling evidence that Harvard professors really do care about their students. Preparing for these exams--and I must call it preparing, because to call it studying would be a grave terminological error--is one of the most dismaying experiences that an academically enthusiastic student can run into.

Exams where the questions are given out in advance are unfair, inaccurate and inane.

But that isn't clear at first. When the questions are first distributed, the whole thing seems great. The questions dictate exactly what one needs to study. No nasty surprises on exam day! What could be better?

It becomes clear rather quickly, though, that this particular dream is going to turn sour. The first indication is at the "review sessions" that ubiquitously accompany classes with advance question exams. The lecture hall or section is surprisingly crowded, filled with unfamiliar faces.

Where these people have been all semester is anybody's guess--perhaps sleeping in, or working on other classes, perhaps simply spending the hour laughing at the saps who were foolish enough to actually show up to class. After a few minutes of "review," there is little doubt that whatever they were doing, their absence will scarcely make a dent in their performance.

The "review" quickly degenerates into a question-and-answer session where the students abandon any pretension of having paid attention all semester and the professor any hope that they did. The audience asks thinly disguised questions directly from the exam sheet, and more often then not, the professor responds with a neatly packaged answer--dashing the hopes of anyone who bothered to prepare that they haven't spent their time and effort in vain.

Even if such a session doesn't make a mockery of academic rigor, advance question exams reward sloth and punish initiative. If you've loyally gone to class, you can expect a crescendo of phone calls from distant acquaintances starting in reading period and culminating two days before the exam. After a day or two the pattern becomes recognizable:

Slacker You're Vaguely Acquainted With "Hey, [insert your name here], you're in [insert class here] aren't you?"

Hapless Leeching Victim: "Yes."

Slacker: "You've been working on the questions, right? Well, some friends and I are thinking of forming a study group. Why don't you come?"

Study group has a solid, respectable sound to it Unfortunately if you are invited under these circumstance, it means that a horde of lazy sloths will Pounce on your answers and Whisk them away to Kinko's before you can say "academic ethics."

Oddly enough, some people really enjoy spouting off their answers to people. In a desperate scramble for friends or sell esteem, they discourse about their answers to anyone who will listen, no matter how shamelessly the Listener has blown off the class.

This represents the essential flaw in giving out exams questions in advance. For too many students, the exam winds up testing how smart their friends are, and how well the other members of their study group prepared their assigned questions. Some final clubs even have lists of answer's on file.

On a regular exam, help from friends can help make up for semester-long slacking. But even the most diligent tutoring cannot ensure that someone who has blown off a class will not slip up on a standard exam. On an advance question final, only the most actively misanthropic loner is ever in danger of getting a deserved low grade.

Considered in the abstract, giving out exam questions in advance doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Students have to write out answers to a series of essay questions, without considering the course material as a whole.

Why not cut out the middle person and simply hand in the essays as if they were a paper assignment? At least with papers, ethical standards against plagiarism (or perhaps just a realistic fear of punishment) seems to carry some weight.

As it stands now, the exam tests how well the students can memorize the answers which they may or may not have written themselves. If professors want a test of photographic memory, why not organize a giant graded game of "Concentration"?

But Concentration wouldn't Probe an important ability that is essential for advance question exams: fine motor coordination. Students are expected to regurgitate their answers at such high speeds that persistent hand cramps, if not full-blown carpal tunnel syndrome, is all but inevitable. Try to stop and rest your wearied fingers and you'll fall behind. Try and pause to consider what you're writing and you'll probably fail.

Well, perhaps not fail But a Perhaps is a distinct possibility.

Benjamin I. Hellet '94 is an editor of The Crimson and he probably doesn't want you to know that he already finished his thesis.