On Thu, Jul 21, 2005 at 09:34:58PM -0500, Peter Samuelson wrote: > [followups to d-newmaint please] OK. > [Matthew Palmer] > > Making NM more of a mentoring+monitoring thing, instead of The Essay > > Test From Hell, would be a Great Thing. It appears that other AMs > > aren't entirely against the idea, either. > > People keep complaining about the Essay Test from Hell, but I guess I > still don't quite see the problem. Who is it that doesn't like it? Is > it AMs that feel it's too much work on top of their other duties to get > to know an applicant's skill level? Is it the competent applicants who > feel it's beneath them? Or is it incompetent applicants who feel > intimidated by all the hard concepts to look up? 1) It doesn't actually assess an applicant's ability to do, merely their ability to recite. 2) Applicants don't like it because it takes a long time to write all those essays. 3) AMs don't like it because it takes a long time to read all those essays. Those are the common problems I've heard expressed about NM at the moment. I feel (3) personally; I don't recall (2) being a problem when I went through (but then again I was (a) avoiding doing Uni work, and (b) put through a while ago, when there probably weren't as many questions). I think (1) can be mitigated to a fair extent by good analysis of the answers, but I can certainly see how there's a potential problem. - Matt
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