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Arts & Entertainment, Film and TV

A blue-headed villain

by Theo Meyer on

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About 15 minutes into Megamind, the movie’s eponymous villain succeeds in defeating Metro Man, the Superman-like hero, giving Megamind control of Metro City. But after moving into city hall and exhausting his list of destructive pranks (launching fire trucks into the sides of buildings, painting blue moustaches on portraits), Megamind (Will Ferrell) grows bored. What is the point of being a villain, he wonders, a little too obviously, with no superhero to battle? The resulting film is four parts digitally animated children’s comedy and one part existential exploration, as Megamind, whose cape and ridiculous high collar frame his bulbous blue head, searches for a new identity.

Many of the film’s plot twists hinge on Megamind’s dehydrating ray gun, which, along with a specially designed watch, enables him to assume the appearances of others. As he ponders life without Metro Man one night while thus disguised, Megamind runs into Roxanne (Tina Fey), a spunky television journalist who convinces him to help her bring down Megamind, forcing Megamind to feign battling himself.

The film, directed by Tom McGrath, is supported by a strong cast: Brad Pitt lends his voice to Metro Man, and Jonah Hill voices Hal, a videographer remarkably similar to all the characters Hill plays in live-action movies. Seeking a new rival, Megamind infuses some of Metro Man’s DNA into the fumbling, stocky Hal, transforming him into an awkward superhero who battles it out with Megamind for Roxanne’s affections. The zigzagging plot makes all of this less clichéd than it sounds, and the movie, for the most part, cleverly mimes the superhero genre.

While not up to the standards of the best Pixar films, Megamind is pretty clever animated fare. As he talks to a bobbing plastic duck while contemplating life without Metro Man, Megamind sullenly comments that he’s engaged in a “heated existential discussion with this dead-eyed plastic desk toy.” A surprising amount of the jokes are aimed high, most notably the Obama-like “No We Can’t” poster Megamind hangs after taking control of the city.

At times, Megamind almost veers in the direction of political allegory (at least if you spent the weekend studying for a political science exam). Without Metro Man to check Megamind, the city becomes a one-party state, victim to the capricious—though fairly harmless—whims of Megamind. But unlike most real-life dictators, Megamind grows tired of absolute power and, egged on by Roxanne, tries to become one of the good guys.

Arts & Entertainment

Why I’m Not Quitting Mad Men

by Brahna Siegelberg on

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The fourth season of Mad Men ended last week, and at last we have seen Don Draper in a moment of weakness: smiling stupidly at the thought of being in love. Spoiler alert: it has been subtly foreshadowed throughout the season, but I don’t think any of us actually expected Don to spontaneously propose to Megan, his sweet, nonchalant, French-Canadian secretary.

But that’s one of the many great things about Mad Men. It’s unpredictable, but not unrealistic. The show about a Madison Avenue advertising agency in the 1960s has managed, even in its fourth season, to continue to wow audiences and garner fans with its thematic and stylistic genius. Though I can’t speak personally to what life was like in the 1960s, I can say that from both reading about and hearing many personal accounts of the era, Mad Men brilliantly captures the zeitgeist of 1960s America while still managing to create TV drama at its best.

One of the most brilliant aspects of the show’s recreation of ‘60s fashion, banter, and social mores, is the way in which it slowly moves from staid, late-Eisenhower America to the progressive Kennedy/Johnson ‘60s. Although the upper-class white men of SCDP (Sterling-Cooper-Draper-Price) are hardly evidence of progress, marginal figures creep into the episodes to demonstrate the changing mood. Most notably, Peggy, a once mousy secretary, has become a powerful copywriter by season four, slowly immersing herself in beatnik counterculture. She even gives self-proclaimed hippies a run for their money, when, locked in a hotel room with artistic director Stan and chided for being “prude,” she strips naked and goads him to “get liberated.” And then there’s Don’s ex-mistress, Midge, who, absent since season one, returns to convince Don to buy one of her paintings, as she—an archetypal bohemian—has become a heroin addict.

As the ‘60s came with promises of a more “permissive” society, it also struggled to let go of some of the traditional mores of the recent past, most notably in regard to female roles. Dr. Faye, a new add-on in season four, and also Don’s girlfriend (that is, until he proposes to Megan), concludes in her surveys that all women ultimately want is to get married. Meanwhile, Joan is given a “promotion” in the season finale, but with no pay increase in sight, she aptly responds, “It’s almost an honour.” Another poignant moment of the season occurs when Peggy, outraged by one male copywriter’s remarks to Joan, decides to fire him. Although Peggy intended to defend Joan, Joan’s response is telling: “All you’ve done is prove to them that I’m a meaningless secretary and you’re another humourless bitch.” In the relatively new world of women in the workplace, power dynamics and the question of whether to bank on or give up entirely one’s feminine wiles are still being worked out.

However, as some of the show’s women are struggling to move forward into the future, others, like Betty Draper,  are stuck in the past. While Don’s blonde, beautiful ex-wife began the series as a sympathetic suburban housewife, condemned to middle-class ennui, by the fourth season she has become embittered and an abusive mother. Now remarried to political advisor Henry Frances, the effects that Betty’s selfish tirades have had on her children are becoming more pronounced, as eight-year-old Sally is caught “touching herself” at a slumber party, hacking off her long locks, and later, hopping on a train to run away to Don’s house.

In the midst of exploring and re-creating life in mid-1960s New York, this season has delved further into the series’ overarching question: “Who is Don Draper?” In the first episode, we see Don with a call girl. He asks her to “do it,” and then we find out that what he wanted was for her to slap him across the face. So Don Draper is a masochist. Interesting. We go further into the archive still when Roger Sterling, in the midst of writing—or dictating to a ghost writer—his memoir, first discovers an eager Don as a fur salesman, looking to enter the world of advertising.  

Amid Jersey Shore, Glee, Gossip Girl, Grey’s Anatomy, How I Met Your Mother, and the rest of the endless list of crap people watch, Mad Men has saved television from becoming a cultural wasteland. Although the show was initially rejected by HBO—generally, the only source of artistically merited television—it’s AMC that had the last laugh.

Arts & Entertainment, Music

Wintersleep works twice as hard on the road

by Kyle Carpenter on

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bighassle.com

It turns out that great albums can happen while you’re busy making other plans. Halifax’s Wintersleep wrote the bulk of their latest album, New Inheritors, while on tour. In addition to getting ready for their show each night, the band spent part of their soundcheck ironing out new songs. As you might expect, finding the time to do so is no easy task.

“It depends on the tour, it depends on how much time you have on stage to [sound]check before the show,” says bassist Mike Bigelow. “Once it’s time for the show, it’s got to be all songs that people already know, or [the songs] have got to be finished.”

Perhaps the band is able to produce new material this way because each member contributes as a songwriter.

 “It’s the first Wintersleep record with this lineup,” says Bigelow. “Everyone in the band also plays guitar and writes, maybe not even full songs, but [is] always writing music and working on stuff at home.”

This type of songwriting shows on the album. New Inheritors has a lot of variety. Just compare the first two singles: “Black Camera,” a minor key straight-ahead rock song, and “New Inheritors,” a slower vocal-driven song with folk undertones. Sometimes the polarity can be seen in a single song, like “Experience The Jewel,” a quiet, jazzy opening-track-turned-epic-overture.

Several songs have a darker feel than Wintersleep’s earlier work. However, Bigelow claims that wasn’t the band’s intent.

“I’m not denying it, but I also don’t think we went in with a conscious effort to make a dark rock album,” he says.

In terms of the content, Bigelow says that on songs like “Black Camera,” it’s up to the listener to come up with their own meaning.

“When it comes to Paul’s lyrics he doesn’t talk about them too much and we don’t really ask,” he jokes. “Paul’s a very interesting writer in a lot of ways and we all respect and admire his lyricism for sure.”

Wintersleep are currently working their way across Canada and the northern United States with the Besnard Lakes. When playing live, the band carefully plans their set list to balance heavier rock songs with their quieter pop tracks.

“Lately we’ve been trying to play these two or three songs in a row that are all in the same tuning, and we can bang them out pretty quickly,” Bigelow says. “It’s fun to start the show out with two or three bangin’ rockers and then you can kind of take it in a different direction.”

Live, the band have also been trying to recreate some of the trickier sounds on the album, like the multiple layers at the end of “Baltic.” However, Bigelow says that their use of things like samplers is kept to a minimum on stage.

 After releasing their third album, Welcome to the Night Sky, the band won the 2008 Juno Award for New Group of the Year, but they haven’t let the award go to their heads.

“We’ve always worked really hard and toured a lot, if there is outside expectation we don’t really feel it because we’re on tour,” Bigelow says. “Wintersleep’s never been a band that had this big record and that was it, not ‘it’ of their career, but [that] just kind of skyrockets them. [For us] it’s always been a constant progression, which I think we prefer. I think that’s a better route.”

Wintersleep is playing Cabaret Mile End with the Besnard Lakes and Rah Rah on October 30.

Arts & Entertainment, Theatre

The show about writing a show

by Alexander Hamilton on

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Something about musical theatre is inherently ridiculous. It has to do with the fact that, whenever you see people singing onstage, you can’t help but notice that you’re watching a performance. As Julien Silverman and Dane Stewart point out in their director’s note, there is a long-standing tradition of “self-reference and meta-drama” in classical theatre. [title of show] follows this tradition, using every opportunity to address the many clichés of musical theatre in humorous and often thought-provoking ways.

[title of show] (yes, that is the actual name of the show) is TNC Theatre’s first production of the year, and it’s also the first musical they have performed in over five years. A play within a play, the story follows two guys writing a musical, about two guys writing a musical, and their struggle to get it on Broadway. As a result, the play’s staging is minimal, with only four chairs for props and a keyboard for accompaniment (played by Sean Mayes), leaving little to distract the audience.

Of the four leads, Ben Harris’s performance (as Hunter as Ben) dominates the stage, although he is awkward during the moments he is not immersed in his role. Michael Grundland (as Jeff as Michael) is a more consistent singer and actor than Harris but often serves as a foil for Ben’s more exuberant performance.

Despite taking a backseat role in the performance, both female leads also deliver strong efforts. Bryna Weiss (as Heidi as Bryna) lacks vocal strength during some of her musical numbers, but she portrays her character with just the right mixture of confidence and timidity to seem realistic. Caitlyn Milot’s performance (as Susan as Caitlyn) can only be described as hilarious. Though fully aware how silly her character is, Milot generates the most laughs and carries the play’s comedy.

The show’s strongest feature is its use of meta-theatre to poke fun at traditional clichés. During one scene, Michael rolls his chair across the floor to Ben, who protests that they were supposed to be in different apartments at the time. Later, the action cuts when one of the other characters announces that “this scene feels too long.”

[title of show] is guilty of indulging in self-mockery at times. For example, during a dream sequence, the characters fly over an imaginary New York City, and Michael protests that this is a ridiculous scene to include in a musical. However, at other times the performance combines humour with some very astute observations.

The best song of the musical, “Die, Vampire, Die!” contains a fairly in-depth discussion of the various challenges represented by artistic inhibitions. In the song, vampires represent the problems Ben and Michael encountered while writing their musical, including some of the tropes and clichés they work to avoid. Later, the actors discuss another problem for artists: popular success. In the song “Nine People’s Favourite Thing” they sing, “I’d rather be nine people’s favourite thing than a hundred people’s ninth favourite thing.”

This seems to be the takeaway message of [title of show]. The musical makes few compromises in its commitment to a certain artistic vision, and TNC’s production holds true to that. The only serious problem with [title of show] is the way the action drags on in the second half, as the four actors try to bring their play to Broadway. Here the scenes and medleys lack cohesion and seem chaotic, failing to maintain the initial momentum and bring the musical to a concise ending. Despite this shortcoming, [title of show] is enjoyable for its humanity, uninhibited creativity, and demonstration that a musical doesn’t have to be predictable in order to be good.

[title of show] runs from October 27-30 in Morrice Hall. More information at tuesdaynightcafe.com.

Student Life

Trivial Pursuit: a McGill student competes on Jeopardy!

by Ricky Kreitner on

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babble.com

In 1856, John C. Fremont ran for President as the first candidate of the newly created Republican Party. He lost to James Buchanan, the 15th president of the United States and the only lifelong bachelor to have ever occupied the White House.

I relate these facts from memory. Anyone can re-construct them quickly, so long as they memorize the connections between the various parts. It isn’t a particularly special ability, and not a sign of superior intelligence; some people are simply better at it than others.

Last August I had the opportunity to test my capacity for retention as a contestant on Jeopardy!. Throughout the taping, it was the name John C. Fremont, out of everything I had studied in the two months since receiving the call to come to Los Angeles, that emerged from the cobwebbed recesses of my memory, illuminated before me in a blinding light.

The process for becoming a Jeopardy! contestant begins with a 50-question online quiz, which is offered twice each year. With only a few seconds to read the category and clue and type your answer, it can be a very stressful few minutes. I felt good, though, about my performance that night. In late April I received an e-mail requesting my presence in Philadelphia on the morning of June 21 to audition for a spot on the show.

Much of Jeopardy!’s success can be attributed to the limitless breadth of material its questions cover. I knew I’d be fine with most literature, history, or—please, God—philosophy questions, but I didn’t stand a chance with any post-1999 television shows or ladies’ magazines questions. My preparation for the Philadelphia audition consisted of making myself more receptive than usual to the world around me and pouring over my father’s 1975 People’s Almanac as we drove south on the Jersey Turnpike that sunny June morning.

The live audition included another 50-question quiz. The other candidates and I waited as the quizzes were marked by the Jeopardy! contestant coordinators. They also conducted a personality interview to filter the personable needles from the dense haystack of trivia dweebs. I did alright, at one point drawing smiles after answering a question on Percy Shelley that nobody else knew, and pushed myself against my own insecurity to just relax.

I received a voicemail less than a month later: “Hi, this is Robert from Jeopardy!. Please call me back when you get this.” The room around me transformed. My friend Sam gave me at least one bear hug, maybe three. I phoned my mother, who didn’t believe me at first. I phoned my father—who had unsuccessfully tried out for Jeopardy! twice, and whose mother tried out for the original Jeopardy! in the 1960s—who then cried. I found the experience overwhelming and surreal.

In the days I spent in Los Angeles before the taping, I tried to both relentlessly mush facts into my brain, and keep my mind clear in the midst of such tumult. At one point, I remember standing at the edge of the Santa Monica pier, a crisp blue day, looking out across the ocean surface to the edge of the horizon, and thinking of only one thing: John C. Fremont.

I slept terribly Sunday night. Hurriedly dressing in my suit and downing what I hoped would be a decent breakfast of everything the Marriott offered, I rode with my dad to the Sony Pictures Studio lot, and was dropped next to the crowd of milling contestants, standing in a circle and mostly not talking. The youngest person in the group by at least 15 years and hoping to assert my confidence, I tried to break the ice by asking where everyone was from. My motives were probably obvious, and my attempt therefore counterproductive, but at least I got to know my potential opponents. If anything at all eased my nerves that morning, it was the friendships, though embryonic, that I forged with some fellow contestants, and the sense that we were all dealing with the same dread.

Each contestant is given a few minutes to practice their buzzing-timing at the podiums, and to get comfortable standing on the stage. This made me much more nervous because I was consistently not buzzing in first, even on practice questions I knew. I tried to change my buzzer-holding style, but nothing worked. I realized I was in for trouble.

Five episodes are taped each day. The two contestants who face the returning champion on any given episode are chosen at random just before their own show starts. They have about five minutes to transition from passive observers watching from the audience to active participants in the game, standing behind the podium, interacting with Alex Trebek, and trying hard, despite the cameras, the audience, and the sheer incredibility of the whole thing, to concentrate on the questions and ring the buzzer before the others.

Watching from the comfort of home, I saw Jeopardy! as a trivia game. As a contestant, however, I experienced Jeopardy! as a buzzer ringing game, and only secondarily as a quiz show. At home, you know the answers, shout them at the TV, and convince everyone that you would be a good contestant. But on the set, you compete with two intelligent people who want just as badly to ring in first. The questions to which you know the answer may not be the ones you ring in first for, and those you ring in first for may not necessarily be questions you actually know the answer to.

For contractual reasons, there’s a lot that I can’t reveal in writing about my experience. All I can tell you is what it felt like psychologically and emotionally to be behind that podium, both playing the game and being aware that you’re playing the game. To feel yourself being picked apart by millions of eyes. It was very lonely. Afterward, I felt slightly traumatized, and not especially due to my performance. My first reaction after the taping was that I’d had no fun whatsoever.

But it didn’t take me long to revise that assessment, to realize that it was really an incredible experience, and a unique one. It’s embarrassing to talk about having been a contestant on Jeopardy!, but everyone gets so excited by the whole thing, and their excitement gets me excited to the point that I no longer think of it as my own experience. And that doesn’t scare me nearly half as much as it would have a few months ago.

Watch Ricky Kreitner on Jeopardy! on October 29 on CBC at 7:30.

Joke

WebCT stupidity of the week

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Neuroscience

Thank you for the explanations. Unfortunately, I’m totally confused by the fundamental difference between living and non-living things. So ants, broccoli, people, and cats are all “living things” and therefore represented by sensory knowledge? However: pants, steamed broccoli, steeples, and hats are “non-living things” and therefore represented by functional knowledge? How is it logical at all that these things are represented by totally different modules in the brain? Perhaps I should look over the associated reading again.

Recipes, Student Life

Pumpkin Bread

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Chelsea Lytle

    Since pumpkin season is now well underway, I felt it would be appropriate to make something with my favourite squash. As delicious as “pumpkin bread” is, it’s not a typical bread—it’s a sweet loaf. This bread was inspired in part by my love of pumpkins, but also by my holiday leftovers. What better use for your leftover turkey, ham, or cranberry sauce than to put them on some good old savory pumpkin bread? This bread is very dense, but it makes for great toast.

Ingredients

3 c. flour

3 1/2 tsp. sugar

1 pack of active dry yeast

1 tbsp. salt

1 egg

4 tbsp. warm water (90F, or microwave for 30 seconds on high)

2 tbsp. olive oil

3/4 c. canned pumpkin

1 tsp. nutmeg

1/2 tsp. cloves

1 pack of finely chopped fresh sage

Directions

1. Dissolve the yeast with warm water and one tablespoon of sugar.

2. In a large bowl, combine the egg, olive oil, pumpkin, and the remainder of the sugar. Add cloves, nutmeg, and sage to taste.

3. Add the yeast mixture and knead for five minutes.

4. Warm the oven on low heat for one minute and then turn it off. Let the dough sit in the warm oven for 15 minutes.

5. Add salt and knead for another five minutes.

6. Let the bread rise in the warm oven for an hour. It’s a dense bread, so this is helpful for getting it to rise properly.

7. Take the dough out and form it into a ball, oval, baguette, or whatever fun shape you like. Place the dough on a piece of parchment paper or greased pan, loosely cover again and let rise for another 30 minutes.

8. Heat the oven to 400F.

9. Cut the top of the loaf once or twice with a sharp knife before putting it in the oven.

10. Bake for 40 minutes.

11. Enjoy your homemade bread.

Science & Technology, Student Life

Comparing the Dell XPS M1730 and HP Mini 210

by Iain Macdonald on

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Holly Stewart

I own four computers. Call me a hoarder all you like, but I use all of them on a daily basis. I have two laptops for school and two LAMP servers in my room at home which I use for working on a network application. Having two laptops for daily use may seem excessive, but each machine serves a different purpose.

One of my laptops is a big, bulky, and powerful gaming laptop. The other is a netbook with about as much processing power as a faculty standard calculator. While these two machines are on opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of power and size, they both serve different needs.

I usually use my heavy-duty laptop when I’m at home. The powerful hardware provided by “the beast,” can run computationally intensive applications, such as Windows. The Dell XPS M1730 features two 200GB hard drives, 4GB of RAM, a dual-core Intel processor, and an Nvidia GeForce 8700M GT graphics card. In other words, it’s one of the most powerful laptops out there. The 17-inch display is great for watching movies and even better for managing multiple windows. The spacious hard drives allow for three installed operating systems. They don’t call this model a desktop-replacement laptop for nothing. At a whopping 11 pounds, it’s quite a burden to carry around, but when I’m coding a project or working on an assignment, the extra power and screen space is a really useful feature. However, the box consumes 240 watts, meaning it gets hot. Very hot. It has recorded fan output temperatures in excess of 70 degrees Celsius. Such power comes at an expense: the nine-cell battery provides a pitiful hour of battery life.

My other machine is as close as it can be to the opposite of the XPS. Netbooks are often described as small, portable, inexpensive laptops, and the HP Mini 210 is exactly that. At 3.5 pounds, the laptop isn’t bothersome to schlep around. The 8-hour battery life is great for long days in class, at the library, and in class again. In standard operating conditions, the netbook uses just under 10 watts, considerably less than your typical lightbulb. However, the biggest limitation when using this machine is the 10.1-inch screen; when it comes to screen space, size definitely does matter. Additionally, the Intel Atom processor common in this line of laptops is about as powerful as a refrigerator, and I wouldn’t dare run anything requiring any considerable amount of memory on the machine. This is made worse by that fact that many of these machines use a shared graphics and applications memory, which means that a quarter of your physical memory is stolen by graphics operations. In fact, when I first got it, on startup, Windows was using over 90 per cent of the machine’s physical memory. I wouldn’t want to do anything more complicated than take notes, or type up an assignment on the port-o-box.

I typically use my netbook when I’m on the go, taking notes, checking e-mail, and most importantly, harvesting FarmVille crops. However, at the end of the day, I cross-synchronize to my heavy-duty laptop to get some serious work done. The beast is useful if you need the power to run intensive applications from WoW to MATLAB, but portability was likely the last thing the hardware engineers considered when designing the rig. Long battery life and light weight make the netbook great for people on the go, but be wary of intensive operations like image or video editing. Using a netbook as a sole computer isn’t something I would soon try, but it makes an excellent replacement for a main machine at home.

Student Life

Punta Arenas: a hidden gem at the bottom of the world

by Wallis Grout-Brown on

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Wallis Grout-Brown
Wallis Grout-Brown

A journey to southern Chile exposes a city full of history and adventures. Punta Arenas is a small, colourful city of about 120,000 people hidden at the southern tip of Chile. Separated from the rest of the country by icebergs, the most direct way to get there is by plane. It can also be reached by car or bus, but this requires a detour through Argentina.

It’s quite easy and cheap to get around in Punta Arenas. Colectivos—taxis that, like buses, follow a certain route—cost the equivalent of $3 per ride, travel all over the city, and are a great way to become familiarized with the area.

Punta Arenas’ fascinating history lends itself to a variety museums and architecture. The Palicio Braun Menendez displays pioneers’ wealth and luxury during settlement, and hosts local cultural events and art exhibitions. Sara Braun’s residence is a magnificent display of the wealth that was present in the region during settlement, with an exquisite facade, interior and a well-kept winter garden. There’s also a lovely bar in the back of the Residence, although it can be a bit pricey for the budget traveller.

Other things to do in Punta Arenas include the winter festival in July, touring the Austral Brewery (and sampling beer, of course), watching the traditional Chilean dance La Cueca, and touring the penguin colony at the nearby Otway Sound.

The area also offers a lot of activities for those who are more adventurous. The national park Torres del Paine is only a two-to-three hour car-ride away. During the summer season (October-April), tourists can hike, climb, kayak, horseback ride, mountaineer, ice-climb and much more.

In the winter season (May-September), day tours are still available. Visitors can also hike and ski in the surrounding area, such as at the Andino Ski Club. Another option is taking the two-hour ferry ride across the Magellan Stretch to Porvenir in Chile, the capital of Tierra del Fuego, the southernmost piece of land in the Americas. In Porvenir, not only are there museums and monuments of the Selknam people (an extinct indigenous group who lived there before European settlement), but there is plenty of hiking to do as well. As you’re wandering along the beach, you may come across a group of flamingos. If you make it to Porvenir, try walking to the old abandoned stone house at the edge of the bay. I have never seen a sunset as beautiful as the one I saw in Porvenir. On your way, you may even run into a herd of guanacos, a llama-like animal found in the region.  

This description only covers the surface of this Chilean city. Puentas Arenas is full of history and adventure, and is definitely worth the journey to the bottom of the world.

Cheap places to stay: Hostal La Estancia ($10-20/night); Hostal O’Higgins ($12-30/night); Hostal La Luna ($10-12/night); Hostal Fitz Roy ($9-34/night)

Features

Questions for your future: the standardized test debate

by Mookie Kideckel on

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Holly Stewart

If you’re like most people, being accepted to McGill was a major relief. It didn’t just mean you could stop worrying about applications, stop tossing and turning every night over whether you had a future, and finally join the “McGill Class of 20–” on Facebook.  It also meant—for those Americans out there—that you didn’t have to worry about the SATs anymore, and for everyone else, that you had skirted standardized testing for good. No more analogies, definitions, tutoring, or prep books.  No more constant reminders of how your intellect was insufficient for the rigours of the College Board.  

Then again, maybe undergrad isn’t the be-all-end-all of upper level education, and grad school is the place for you.  In that case, welcome back to the world of standardized testing.  But this time, there’s a lot more to it than memorizing word lists and remembering what pi is. And at McGill, standardized testing has a storied history.

Standardized tests are one of the components often required in graduate school applications across North America that are meant to apply the same standard to all students in order to offer a prediction of initial academic success. They are all administered by American organizations. The Education Testing Service administers the Graduate Record Exam (GRE), which tests verbal, quantitative, and analytical skills for candidates applying to academic graduate degrees and some business programs.  It also administers the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), founded by the Law School Admission Council in charge of the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) and the Graduate Management Admissions Council, which owns the Graduate Management Admissions Test (GMAT).  ETS also owns Prometric, which administers a host of other tests and certifications.  Prospective medical students take the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT), administered by the Association of American Medical Colleges.  While standardized tests are designed specifically to avoid potential subjectivity or institutional differences giving some candidates an unfair advantage, some have argued that they have their own problems, particularly in biasing some students’ success over others.

For one thing, there are language and diversity issues.  McGill’s medical school dropped the MCAT for Canadian applicants from Canadian schools just this year, because no equivalent test exists in French.  

 “We need to be cognizant of that fact, especially when the MCAT tests things such as verbal reasoning,” said Dr. Saleem Razack, assistant dean of admissions for the Faculty of Medicine. “We wanted to make sure that we were reaching out appropriately to all of the Canadian population, which includes Francophones.”  

It is important to keep in mind, added Razack, that standardized tests are “always designed for a population.  Some people think that because it is applicable in one it is transferable to another, and that is sometimes true, but not necessarily. The MCAT is designed with the American population in mind. Our students are not that different as a demographic, but you have to bear in mind the issue that population matters in order for tests to be really standardized.”

McGill’s law school has never required the LSAT for similar reasons. According to Ali Martin-Mayer, assistant dean of admission and recruitment for the McGill Faculty of Law, McGill does not require the test because no other Quebec law school does.  The reason for this, said Martin-Mayer, is that the test is only offered in English.  

“So the main reason the LSAT is not an eligibility requirement at McGill, is that it would put non-English speakers at a serious disadvantage.”  

There are also issues regarding cost. Razack cited this as a smaller factor in Medicine’s decision to make the MCATs optional. Standardized tests themselves range from about $200 to $250.  Then there are the books. Each testing organization has some free preparation material available on their websites, but many test-takers decide to supplement that with Princeton Review, Kaplan, or Barron’s materials, which can cost as much as $150 each.  Students who take the premium route and enrol in a prep course offered by one of these companies to help their studies can dish out up to $2000, or more if they’re using private tutors.  Many students take each test twice to boost their scores, and a healthy number of test takers won’t end up at a graduate program after taking the corresponding test.

These high costs have raised criticism from some groups.  Consumer rights organization Americans for Educational Testing Reform (AETR) writes on their website that the “big 3 non-profit testing companies,” ETS, ACT Inc., and College Board, are “monopolistic corporations” that “consistently and shamelessly take advantage of American students and aspiring professionals for financial gain.”  Using copies of ETS tax forms obtained from the IRS, AETR alleges that ETS earned $94 million in profits in 2007—155% of the industry average—and compensated their CEO with seven times the industry average: nearly $1 million  for the year.

 “Nonprofit companies,” writes AETR on their website, “are supposed to serve the public interest.  In return, the IRS exempts them from paying taxes. […] But rather than uphold their non-profit promises, [the Big 3 test companies] would rather engage in misconduct including raking in big profits, hand out exorbitant executive compensation packages, and paying their governing board members.” These allegations are serious, but it is worth noting that AETR website says nothing about who they are. It is difficult to find third party publications mentioning the organization, and they did not respond to the Tribune’s requests for an interview.

According to Tom Ewing, director of press relations at ETS, concerns about both cost and diverse communities are misplaced.  Speaking specifically about the GREs, he maintained that the operation is not for profit. The companies’ Revenues come from for-profit subsidiaries like Prometric. The high cost is due to the amount of people and time necessary to “come up with tests that are basically flawless.”  The test is also administered on the computer, which requires a complex network with top-notch security.  “Those costs have to be offset in some fashion,” said Ewing.

High costs may also be related to the rigorous process ETS undertakes to ensure its questions do apply to diverse communities. Ewing explained that the average question takes 18 months to make, from the drawing board to a student’s test. Gender and racially balanced test development committees, assembled from across the United States, initially craft each potential question. Problems are then sent through multiple stages of testing, including a sensitivity review that looks at “whether the question may or may not be offensive to a particular group, whether it might cover a topic that the average test taker may not be familiar with, or if it might have language that might not be familiar to all test takers.” Questions also go through a fairness review to ensure they do not “inaccurately or inappropriately portray one gender or racial group.” Eventually, questions are tried out on test takers, and then analyzed for how students performed on them by race, gender, and geographic location. If questions don’t work for one group, they are tossed out and everything starts again.

 “The bottom line is that by the time we assemble a whole test full of these questions, they have been through a tremendous quality control process to make sure they’re fair,” said Ewing  

And indeed, despite criticism, many educators still seem to have faith in standardized testing.  Ewing said that over the last two years, the number of MBA programs accepting the GREs jumped from a
bout 50 to nearly 450.  Though the test is optional, McGill Law requires people who have taken the LSAT to disclose their marks.  “If a candidate has studied well for it, the test is designed to predict performance in first year law,” said Martin-Mayer.  “It’s not a perfect test, but it is a good measure, a good indication, and still useful information for us to have.  

McGill Medicine requires MCATs from all non-Canadian applicants or students from non-Canadian schools.  

“You could look at this as a bit of a staged process. We decided to go cautiously because there is definitely more heterogeneity with students applying internationally,” said Razack. “We are not as able to know all the programs that are out there on a worldwide basis, so that’s why we kept it.”

Ultimately, though, Razack is satisfied with the means that McGill Medicine admissions uses to test the “non-cognitive” skills that are such an important part of being a physician including a new process called multiple mini-interviews, which can be conducted in either English or French. Whether that sort of system will ever replace standardized testing outside of Quebec, and whether test takers and critics would be kinder in their reviews of those sorts of processes, remains to be seen.  

Whether standardized tests are biased or an accurate measure of academic abilities, change from the current system seems unlikely.  Yet it is also unclear whether change is necessary or desirable.  Upset about studying for the tests or not, most students will have to take one of them to pursue graduate studies. There may be serious problems when the majority of schools rely on a tiny number of private organizations to filter their applicants, but until somebody implements a better way of doing things, us grumpy test takers may just have to suck it up.

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