fandangoya wrote:Well while we're on the discussion of fees....I'd really like to know why ETS needs $23 PER school to mail a piece of paper. Now that seems absolutely ludicrous to me.
TRUE THAT! It isn't enough that each test of theirs costs around $150 (!) a pop ($140 subject, $160 general). My wife is majoring in physics teaching, so she had to pay them another $130 for the PRAXIS garbage. Just thinking of myself, I've paid them for the PSAT, the SAT, three SAT IIs, around 10 AP tests, a subject GRE, a general GRE, and additional score reports to half the schools I applied to... that's easily over a thousand dollars from just me alone. Think of how many kids each year are forced to pay outrageous fees for any of these tests... and then think of what all the money goes for: a piece of paper. A scantron reader. Heck, my quantitative/verbal scores were all IDENTICAL going from SAT to SAT IIs to general GRE... seems like I didn't need to pay so much to tell them something they already charged me out the nose for multiple times. And $23 to mail a report? I had no idea that the cost of paper, ink, and postage had gone up so dramatically this year...
Yeah, yeah, I know. They have to pay to develop the tests (...since they change so drastically from year to year, I know I'm at least getting my money's worth there...), they have to pay the proctors, they have to pay graders for written portions, yada yada yada. They claim to be a "private nonprofit organization", but seriously? If they really need to charge THAT much merely to recover their costs, then maybe things could be run a tad more efficiently. And I know what they say on their website about themselves and the word "monopoly", but from Wikipedia:
In economics, a monopoly (from Greek monos / μονος (alone or single) + polein / πωλειν (to sell)) exists when a specific individual or an enterprise has sufficient control over a particular product or service to determine significantly the terms on which other individuals shall have access to it.
Sounds to me like it fits the bill... and maybe that's why they have so many resources on their website attempting to argue to the contrary...
Sorry guys. Pent up anguish over waiting to hear from my top schools, I'm sure...