Measuring Your Skills

By Bob Embrey
Contributing Writer to World Wide Learn

Academic testing and certification exams are standardized by national education boards or industry organizations with a specific goal in mind: to measure your skills or product knowledge. Standardization means that everyone is measured against the same goals and the tests are given in the same format every time. The exams are predominantly multiple choice but may include true/false, short answer or calculations, and all have time limits.

There are two main types of standardized tests and various subsets of those:

• K-12
• College Admissions
• Graduate and Professional
• Medicine and Health Sciences
• English / TOEFL

• Vocational / Professional Licensure
• Software / Hardware Expert

Academic tests are designed in a standardized way to measure skills or knowledge and they serve several purposes. Most often they are used by colleges and universities for admissions ranking but are also used to add designations to your area of specialty. In an admissions environment your scores determine whether or not you'll be admitted to a college or university program and where you'll be placed on the waiting list if there is one.

Certification tests measure specific skills and/or product knowledge. Typically these tests are standardized to make sure individuals possess the knowledge necessary for a particular vocation or to use a specific product, such as software. Licenses and certifications are the result and these will open doors for jobs or distinguish you from the rest of the crowd.

Preparation
In all cases, test preparation is crucial to your success. Study guides, practice tests, and reading materials are readily available for you to begin preparation.

What to expect
You may take a traditional paper and pencil exam, a web-based exam, or a computer-based exam. The level of difficulty depends on the subject being tested, but you can expect to spend 30 minutes to three hours or more demonstrating your knowledge.

Many tests are now administered on computer and several are adaptive, which means that as you answer questions your ability relative to a norm group is measured and questions are delivered accordingly. With adaptive testing you will receive few questions that are very easy or very hard and most will match your ongoing demonstrated level of knowledge. If the test determines that you are answering at a passing level after a certain number of questions it may end sooner than you'd expect and you pass, or visa versa. While this may seem daunting, these tests can be mastered through education, hands-on training and proper preparation.