Multiple Choice Questions and Aptitude Tests

Multiple Choice Questions (MCQ) are very limited in usefulness, and are necessary evil to deal with large number of candidates, along with necessity to machine grade their answers. Normal stepwise long answer questions are far more effective in assessing a learner’s abilities, and thinking orientation and degree of match with the desired thought process in a context.

Multiple Choice Aptitude Test is an untested bogey, or at its best an uncritical superstition, with no basis or proof that it works ( just as measures of intelligence such as IQ), de-contextualized pattern recognition or puzzle solving can fall easy prey to superficial training, or gaming the system, lacks the depth of a scholarly discipline or an intellectual tradition to test anything real, and at its best can become some surrogate version of intuitive Maths.

We should add a test of comprehension and other subjects that are normality taught at school, but are not part of JEE as of now.

Aptitude test will have a negative bearing on the rural—urban divide. Urban students will be able to perform better in an aptitude test. Hence it is unfair.

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