U of M News Wire: March 8, 2007

U of M study: standardized tests outdo prior academic experience in predicting student success

By Mark Cassutt
U of M News Wire

In the largest and most comprehensive study of graduate and professional school admissions tests, a University of Minnesota-led team has found that standardized test scores are more accurate than prior academic experience in predicting student success.

Nathan Kuncel, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota, and Sarah Hezlett, of the Personnel Decisions Research Institute, said that after 80 years of controversy about the value of such tests, their study reinforces the correlation between students’ standardized test scores and success in their graduate studies and in their field. The study is published in the Feb. 23 issue of Science.

The study evaluated graduate school tests as they relate to several indicators of performance, including first-year grades, overall grades, licensing exams, faculty ratings, degree attainment, research productivity, citation counts and comprehensive exams. Evaluations of tests were based on hundreds, thousands or hundreds of thousands of people. All outcomes showed that standardized test scores outperformed prior academic experience in predicting success.

“Standardized tests from the GRE to the MCAT, and from the LSAT to the GMAT predict a lot of important and complex student outcomes, years after the test was taken, in fields ranging from the humanities to engineering, medicine, management and the law,” Kuncel said.

Graduate admissions tests are designed to indicate students’ abilities in a range of disciplines. Most of these standardized tests combine verbal, quantitative and reasoning sections with field-specific knowledge. They are a primary selection factor for admission into many graduate programs, such as law, medicine, science and business.

“Both advocates and critics often have their favorite study or two that supposedly proves their point,” said Kuncel.  “This study is based on an exhaustive synthesis of the literature, both pro and con. The final analysis is that the tests are solid predictors.”

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U of M Libraries gives community access to archive of Holocaust survivors and witness testimonies

By Christopher James
U of M News Wire

The University of Minnesota Libraries has become one of only six universities that provide the public and researchers access to the world's largest archive of visual histories of the Holocaust.

The University Libraries has launched a digital media archive of testimonies from the University of Southern California (USC) Shoah Foundation Institute's Visual History Archive. The archive includes nearly 52,000 video testimonies of Holocaust survivors and other witnesses, in 32 languages and from 56 countries. Most of the interviews -- about 90 percent -- are with Jewish survivors of Nazi persecution; however, political prisoners, Roma and Sinti (Gypsy) survivors, gays and lesbians, Jehovah's Witnesses, and liberators, witnesses, rescuers, and aid providers are also represented in the archive.

"The oral histories in the Visual History Archive are an invaluable resource for researchers," said University Librarian Wendy Pradt Lougee. "By studying the firsthand experiences of these survivors, scholars of history, religion, anthropology and many other disciplines can gain the authentic perspective that only primary source material can provide. We are deeply honored that the University of Minnesota is now one of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute's partners and can give millions of Minnesotans access to the archive."

The USC Shoah Foundation Institute grew out of Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, founded by Steven Spielberg to document the experiences of survivors and other witnesses of the Holocaust. The institute currently provides licensed access to the U of M and five other universities worldwide. These partners can, in turn, give users access to the entire archive over the high-speed Internet2 research network.

"The Holocaust is one of the most horrific events in history," said Stephen Feinstein, director of the University's Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. "However, thanks to the work of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute, survivors and liberators have had their stories recorded and documented in a clear fashion in many languages."

"The project offers many new opportunities for research and learning, especially for fields like history, sociology, psychology and foreign languages," Feinstein said. "This is a unique opportunity for the University of Minnesota to move to the front of Holocaust and genocide studies."

Accessing the Visual History Archive requires users to be physically present on the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities campus. Using a computer connected to the university's Internet servers, a user can conduct a variety of searches using a hierarchical thesaurus that includes more than 50,000 geographic and experiential keywords, as well as the names of every person mentioned in the testimonies and biographical information for each interviewee. Users can view testimonies already available on the local U of M cache or request that testimonies be uploaded from the USC Shoah Foundation Institute's archive.

Users can access the local VHA site at http://www.lib.umn.edu/vha.

The mission of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute is to overcome prejudice, intolerance, and bigotry -- and the suffering they cause -- through the educational use of the institute's visual history testimonies. The institute relies upon partnerships in the United States and around the world to provide public access to the archive and advance scholarship in many fields of inquiry. The institute and its partners also utilize the archive to develop educational products and programs for use in many countries and languages.

The University of Minnesota Libraries provides collections, access and service to students, faculty, researchers, and citizens worldwide. With a collection of over 6.5 million volumes, the University Libraries are a vital component in the education and information infrastructure of the state of Minnesota and make a fundamental contribution to the university's excellence in teaching, research, and public outreach.

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Growing Concerns

A parenting question-and-answer column with Dr. Martha Erickson

of the University of Minnesota

Question: Every time our 16-year-old daughter goes out we seem to get into a battle over what time she has to be in. She tells us that we're stricter than all the other parents, that she can never have any fun and that it's embarrassing to be the first one coming home. We're not sure what's a realistic curfew or how to enforce it without being the “bad guys.”

Answer: Curfews can easily become a battleground for parents as their teenagers strive for increasing control over their own lives. Certainly parents need to be in charge, providing the limits and guidance that keep teenagers safe and healthy. But, it helps if young people feel that they have a voice in decisions. These guidelines were helpful in our family as we worked together to determine reasonable curfews for our kids.

• Instead of having parents declare an arbitrary curfew, parents can first ask their children what they feel is a reasonable time for them to be home, considering all the circumstances of where, when, and what the young people will be doing. In the long run, this helps teens learn to be responsible, reasonable, and considerate. (In our family we found that when we let the kids suggest a curfew, it often was an earlier time than we might have set.)

• Talk with other teens and their parents about what is reasonable. This is important; especially when the problem seems to be that “all of the other kids can stay out later.” If parents and kids decide together on some community rules, then no one needs to feel embarrassed because their parents are stricter than others.

• Have clearly set rules and expectations that everyone in the family understands. One of our family rules was that the kids would always let us know where they would be and when they planned on returning. In the rare case where one of the kids had a problem making it home on time, they knew they could call us without getting in trouble. Now, as our kids look back on their teens, they say they knew we trusted them and so they did not want to betray that trust. And, although they may not always have understood it at the time, they say they know that the reason we set a curfew was because we cared about them and their well being. A curfew is not a punishment.

• Check into whether your town has curfew laws for kids your daughter's age. Parents need to be aware of, and support their children in being respectful of, these laws. To accommodate the fact that many teens are night owls, parents might host late-night get-togethers -- maybe for videos and pizza -- at home. This gives teens the chance for late-night fun, in a safe place, within the rules of the community.

Through all of your teens' striving for control and independence, remember that young people thrive when they know that parents care enough to set limits. In the short-run, we may not win a popularity contest. But, in the long-run, our kids will know that we had their best interests at heart.