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But what would such a test look like? Personally I'm having a hard time imagining any question that could measure grad school qualities (ability to analyze information in new ways, composition, teaching ability). If any test-proponents here have examples of such questions, it might be helpful to post a few so readers can get a sense of what you are looking for in an exam.</p>
<p>Even if a test could be developed to measure these abilities, though, it cannot measure the patience and resolve that are arguably the most important factors in research potential. Reading and writing ability by themselves will not create a dissertation. Despite the flaws, undergrad GPA is just a better measure of these traits than a test could be.
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<p>I think you've managed to contradict yourself. </p>
<p>You've listed a bunch of traits like the ability to analyze new information, composition, teaching ability, patience/resolve, and you've noted that these traits cannot be properly measured by a test. True enough. However, it's hard for me to see how they can be properly measured any better by grades. Just because a person has top grades doesn't mean that he has good teaching ability, nor has he necessarily demonstrated patience/resolve, nor the ability to compose, nor the ability to analyze new information. </p>
<p>However, I do not propose that PhD admissions programs be changed. At least, not at this time. What needs to be changed first are med/law school admissions and this is because that is where the use of GPA is abused the most, probably for ranking purposes. Med/law schools know they will be ranked on their "selectivity", meaning the GPA of the students they admit, which provides the strongly perverse incentive to admit students with high grades regardless of how meaningful those grades are. PhD programs for the most part do not engage in these sorts of shenanigans and so that is why I do not propose to reform their admissions, at least not at this time. Med and law schools are the real culprits. They either don't know, or they don't WANT to know about the variability of grading standards. </p>
<p>I would further point out that pure exam-based admissions is precisely how college admissions used to be run in the past. 100 years ago, if you wanted to get into Harvard or MIT, you took a test. Score high enough, and you were in. Simple as that. As ashernm has pointed out, the reason why this was stopped was due to simple anti-Semitism - college administrators discovered that too many Jews were getting in by scoring highly on the test, so they decided to implement 'comprehensive' admissions policies which was really just code words for saying "we want to admit fewer Jews". Via comprehensive admissions, you can always make up a reason for why you are going to reject somebody and nobody can ever challenge you. You can always say that somebody is just not 'well-rounded enough'. Hence, comprehensve admissions is really just a license for the admissions staff to do anything it wants to do, including whatever racist or discriminatory desire you wish to indulge. </p>
<p>Let's keep in mind that the elite colleges did not just discriminate against Jews. They also heavily discriminated against blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Catholics (especially the Irish and Italians), and basically everybody who wasn't a male WASP. At least in the old days, if an African-American wanted to go to Harvard, all he had to do was score highly on the Harvard exam. Even if the Harvard administration didn't want him around, the fact that he had a high test score meant that Harvard had to admit him. With the comprehensive admissions policies of the early 1900's, the administration now had the perfect excuse to refuse admission to any African-American it wanted. </p>
<p>I would also point out that pure exam-based admissions are how college admissions are still run today in many countries. Wanna go to IIT? Simple. You gotta score well on the JEE test. No fuss, no muss about trying to weigh different grading standards of different schools. The game is simple. You either get a high test score, or you don't. It is for this reason that IIT is considered to be extremely meritocratic and has gotten so much respect throughout the world. IIT has managed to devise a rigorous testing system that works extremely well for them. If IIT can do it, I'm sure the US law and med-schools can do it too.</p>