This is gonna be fun.
Feb. 26th, 2007 04:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meitantei_cjWhat do you do when you've taken a civil service exam, get your answers back with a proposed answer key, and some of your answers aren't what you marked?
I'm on a forum (have been there pretty much all day) regarding the Firefighter exam. People are pissed. I'm irritated myself. I worked out my scores on each part of the test. I've never been a math whiz, but this is what I figured:
Memorization: 100%. Easy. Extremely easy. I've always been good with memorization. My memory's a bit selective at times, but if I want to remember something, I remember it... which is why I don't trust the results from the postal exam I took a couple years ago. There's no way I got a 73.5 when I know I aced the memory portion. And the memory portion, along with the name/number/address checking, took up a nice chunk of the exam. There is no way I should have gotten anything less than 80%. But I digress.
Speed: 100%. Again, easy... although ten minutes flew pretty quickly and I only had time to check two of my answers before the bell rang.
Cognitive: 96%. I got two wrong here. No idea what they were, of course. Probably shouldn't have gotten them wrong, but I'm not crying.
Those questions made up the majority of the test. So far so good. The problem was the stupid behavioral/opinionated part. 105 questions worth 1/3 of a point, 35 points total. I got 79% on that part. And I call bull.
The problem with this test and the postal exam, at least for me, is that I know I'm getting penalized for opinions. Never mind whether or not I can do the job. Never mind my ability to learn how to do the job. And how the heck do you differentiate between "Strongly Disagree" and "Disagree"? If you disagree, you disagree. Of the answers I marked "disagree" (eight), three were actually wrong. The other five, according to the answer key, are "strongly disagree". I haven't even gone through the other side of the spectrum yet.
Anyway, I now have to stay home this weekend. There's a protest period that starts on Saturday, and I have to go to some school I've never heard of in Manhattan to protest. Hopefully I won't have to wait two hours before we get to start. Then again, I don't even know if the answers they gave me and say I marked are the answers I actually marked. 9_9 I smell a rat. And Mom says private industry is cutthroat.
Here's one. Don't know what the question was since I don't have the test, but I put A ("Strongly Agree".) The correct possible answers are B, C, or D ("Agree", "Neutral", and "Disagree"). What? So as long as you fell in the middle somewhere on that question, you were okay?
Test's over. I want a copy of those questions. Every single one of them. I want an actual copy.
If the FDNY made up their own tests, we wouldn't have this. Why does DCAS make the tests?
I'm on a forum (have been there pretty much all day) regarding the Firefighter exam. People are pissed. I'm irritated myself. I worked out my scores on each part of the test. I've never been a math whiz, but this is what I figured:
Memorization: 100%. Easy. Extremely easy. I've always been good with memorization. My memory's a bit selective at times, but if I want to remember something, I remember it... which is why I don't trust the results from the postal exam I took a couple years ago. There's no way I got a 73.5 when I know I aced the memory portion. And the memory portion, along with the name/number/address checking, took up a nice chunk of the exam. There is no way I should have gotten anything less than 80%. But I digress.
Speed: 100%. Again, easy... although ten minutes flew pretty quickly and I only had time to check two of my answers before the bell rang.
Cognitive: 96%. I got two wrong here. No idea what they were, of course. Probably shouldn't have gotten them wrong, but I'm not crying.
Those questions made up the majority of the test. So far so good. The problem was the stupid behavioral/opinionated part. 105 questions worth 1/3 of a point, 35 points total. I got 79% on that part. And I call bull.
The problem with this test and the postal exam, at least for me, is that I know I'm getting penalized for opinions. Never mind whether or not I can do the job. Never mind my ability to learn how to do the job. And how the heck do you differentiate between "Strongly Disagree" and "Disagree"? If you disagree, you disagree. Of the answers I marked "disagree" (eight), three were actually wrong. The other five, according to the answer key, are "strongly disagree". I haven't even gone through the other side of the spectrum yet.
Anyway, I now have to stay home this weekend. There's a protest period that starts on Saturday, and I have to go to some school I've never heard of in Manhattan to protest. Hopefully I won't have to wait two hours before we get to start. Then again, I don't even know if the answers they gave me and say I marked are the answers I actually marked. 9_9 I smell a rat. And Mom says private industry is cutthroat.
Here's one. Don't know what the question was since I don't have the test, but I put A ("Strongly Agree".) The correct possible answers are B, C, or D ("Agree", "Neutral", and "Disagree"). What? So as long as you fell in the middle somewhere on that question, you were okay?
Test's over. I want a copy of those questions. Every single one of them. I want an actual copy.
If the FDNY made up their own tests, we wouldn't have this. Why does DCAS make the tests?
