NITE cancels section of psychometric exam given ahead of time in mock test

The Psychometric Exam is a statistical exam which bases students' final scores relative to the success and failure of all students that were tested on a particular testing date.

APRIL 5, 2015 17:50

Students at Hadassah college (photo credit: Courtesy) — Students at Hadassah college

(photo credit: Courtesy)

The National Institute for Testing and Evaluation (NITE) announced on Sunday it would cancel a segment of the Psychometric Exam that had been included in a mock test of one of the test preparation institutes.

Students who took the exam last Wednesday, ahead of the Passover holiday, alleged that one of the quantitative reasoning sections of the psychometric exam had already been included in a practice exam taken by students at one of the preparatory institutes.

The institute said it would cancel the section in question so that it will not be included in the final grading of the exams. Despite this, many students are protesting and claiming that this move is not enough as it still provided the students who were familiar with the section a distinct “advantage,” granting them more time to move on to other sections.

The psychometric exam, required for people applying for admittance to universities and colleges, has eight sections and three parts – Quantitative, Verbal (Hebrew) and English, and determines the scores relative to the success and failure of all students who were tested on a particular date.

As such, many candidates take a course in one of numerous test preparation institutes and sit for mock exams ahead of the real test.

If a group of students had access to or knowledge of questions from the real exam, it would help them increase their scores, and reduce the scores of all others who sit for the exam.

“Those who know me know that for the past three months I have been studying like crazy for the upcoming Psychometric Exam in April. I signed up for an excellent [preparatory] course, I felt that the course was able to bring me to a point of knowledge and to the achievements in the simulation [exams] to which I aspired,” one student who took the exam wrote on her Facebook page.

According to the student, following the exam she found out that, "a full quantitative chapter that was on the real exam also appeared on one of the simulation exams in the past of students of a certain [test preparatory] institute."

She attached pictures of the section in question to her Facebook post, which has garnered more than a thousand “likes” and “shares.”

“Ultimately, this situation is likely to lead to an unfair test and to lower grades of students who studies for three months and paid a lot of money on a course and on the test date,” she wrote.

The National Institute for Testing and Evaluation, which administers the psychometric exam, had said it would look into the incident.

“On learning about the complaints the Institute began to thoroughly examine the issue and will notify its findings to all test takers upon completion,” the institute said.

The institute also noted that there are there are eight chapters in every exam, of which only six are used to determine the final score.

The other two sections are used as “backup and for various testing.”