Career Counselling

The Test of English as a Foreign Language is abbreviated as TOEFL. It is intended to evaluate the ability of a student to understand English in an academic setting. It is considered as the admission requirement for non-native English speakers for education and profession. A TOEFL score is valid for two years after the completion of two years, your score won’t be considered as your language proficiency level. Colleges and universities usually consider only the most recent TOEFL score.

It is widely known that TOEFL test is a registered trademark of Educational Testing Service (ETS) and is valid worldwide. Administrated first in1964, till date the exam has been passed by more than 23 million students. The test was originally developed at the Center for Applied Linguistics under the direction of Stanford University.

The TOEFL Committee of Examiners comprises of 12 specialists in linguistics, teaching, language testing, or research. The board is considered as the advisory body of the TOEFL test content.

Formats and Contents of TOEFL

The format of the TOEFL can be categorised into two parts- internet based test and paper based test. The detailed discussion of these two formats is given below.

Internet based test

Internet based tests have been introduced in phases, with the United States, Canada, France, Germany, and Italy in 2005 and the rest of the world in 2006. This is replaced by Computer based training. This is a four-hour test consists of four sections, with special focus on the basic language skills (however, some tasks require integrating multiple skills) and majority of the questions are based on language used in an academic, higher-education environment. The Internet based test can be subcategorized into- reading, listening, Speaking and writing

Reading – There will be 3 to 5 passages to read focused on academic topics. After going through the passages, you have to answer questions like cause-effect, compare-contrast and argumentation, details, inferences, essential information, sentence insertion, vocabulary, rhetorical purpose and overall ideas.

Listening – This section comprises of six passages 3–5 minutes in length and questions about the passages. Student conversations and four academic lectures or discussions are the main part of this section. There will be two speakers, a student and either a professor or a campus service provider in this section. This section is focused on maintaining the ability of the student to understand main ideas.

Speaking- Speaking test will help to evaluate, how comfortably, a student can express his views.

Writing- Writing test is intended to check out how practically and clearly, a student can express his views. Proficiency in grammar and vocabulary is also evaluated in this part.

Paper-based Test

Paper based tests are administered on fixed dates 6 times each year. The test is 3 hours long and consisted of same parts as the former.

Listening – The Listening section consists of 3 parts and consisted of 50 questions

Structure and Written Expression – In this section, you have to complete 15 exercises sentence completion and 25 exercises of identifying errors.

Reading Comprehension – It contains 50 questions about reading passages.

Writing- it contains one essay with 250–300 words in average.

The Scholastic Aptitude Test and Scholastic Assessment Test, abbreviated as SAT, is defined as a standardized test for college admissions in the United States and other English Speaking countries. Owned, published and developed by the College Board, it has been controlled and scored by the Educational Testing Service till date. The test is designed to determine a student’s proficiency for admission in the colleges there.

The modern structure of SAT is developed in 2005 and costs about $47 ($75 International), without the late fees. The scoring varies from 600 to 2400. The scoring of this test comprises of the test results from three 800-point sections (math, critical reading, and writing).

Objective of SAT

According to the score of the SAT literacy and writing skills that are required for passing the academic year in college successfully. The paper is designed in such a way, so that your analyzing and problem solving skills can be judged. Essentially SAT is organized by high school sophomores, juniors and seniors.

Structure of the SAT

The test of SAT can be categorized into three major sections: Critical Reading, Mathematics, and Writing. The scoring of each section varies scale of 200–800. Total scores are calculated by adding up scores of the three sections. Each major section is divided into three parts, each with 10 subsections. The test lasts for 3 hours and 45 minutes.

Following are the main areas of concern of SAT.

Critical Reading

The Critical Reading (formerly Verbal) section of the SAT comprises of three scored sections: two 25-minute sections and one 20-minute section. The questions mainly include sentence completions and short and long reading passages. Critical Reading sections normally begin with 5 to 8 sentence completion questions. It will determine the students’ proficiency of vocabulary and understanding of sentence structure. The maximum of the Critical Reading section is composed of questions regarding reading passages. The passage contains short excerpts from the subjects like social sciences, humanities, physical sciences, or personal narratives and answer questions based on the passage.

Mathematics

The Mathematics test section of the SAT is the Quantitative Section, which determines analytical skill of the students. The mathematics section consists of three scored sections – two 25-minute sections and one 20-minute section. The 25 minutes section comprises of multiple choice, with 28 questions in total. Rest 16 is also multiple-choice question, but the timeline is 20 minutes.

Calculator Use

Calculator using test us intended to judge the skill of students to use calculator. It is also determined from the test that how fast the students can use it.

Writing

The writing section of the SAT comprises of multiple-choice questions and a brief essay. The essay contains about 28% of the total writing score. The rest of the score is contributed by the multiple-choice question.

The multiple-choice questions encompass error identification questions, sentence improvement questions, and paragraph improvement questions. In the essay part, you will be asked to write essay on common subjects. Experts say this part is comparatively easy to handle.

International English Language Testing System abbreviated as IELTS is typically defines as an international standardized test of English language proficiency. The examination is jointly controlled by University of Cambridge ESOL Examinations, the British Council and IDP Education Pty Ltd, after it was established in 1989.

Typically, the IELTS can be categorized as the Academic Version and the General Training Version.

1. The Academic Version is especially for those who want to take admission in the universities and other institutions of higher education. The professionals like medical doctors and nurses, who seek to pursue a professional career in abroad, have to sit for this exam also.

2. The General training version is for those, who are looking for pursing non-academic training or gaining work experience, or for immigration purposes.

The exam of IELTS is accepted in the institutions like Australian, British, Canadian, Irish, New Zealand and South Africa and over 3,000 academic institutions and professional organizations in the United States,. It is also the primary for immigration to Australia and Canada.

The result or the Test Report Form (TRF) of the IELTS Examination is valid for two years.

Structure of IELTS

The paper of IELTs consists of four Modules – Listening, Reading, Writing and Speaking. Although the modules of Listening and Speaking are same, the Reading and Writing Modules varies according to the candidate’s willingness to take the Academic or General Training Versions of the Test.

Listening

The listening module comes with four sections. At the beginning of each sections, there is a short introduction, which informs the candidates about the situation and the speakers. They then have some time look through the questions. The first three sections of the question have a break in the middle. You cannot hear each section more than once.

Reading

The reading test follows the academic module has three sections. It comprises of 13 or 14 questions. There is a General test, which also contains 3 sections. However, the texts are shorter than the previous ones, but the number of texts to be read can be 5.

Writing

The writing part of IELTS comprises of two sections and the second section us an decriptive essay.

Speaking

The speaking test us one of the most important parts and consists of three sections. The first section involves a comprehensive round of interview during which candidates may be asked about their hobbies, interests and obviously the reasons for taking IELTS exam. Apart from these, you may be asked about general topics like clothing, your free time, computers and the internet or about your family. In the second section, candidates have to speak about an topic for a certain limit of time. Topic card will be given to the students and he will get a minute to prepare for that. The third section is a discussion round between the examiner and the candidate. The question in this part, mainly involves the questions relating to the theme, on which the candidates have already spoken in the second round of the interview.

Students aspiring for pursuing a management degree in the overseas are familiar with the GMAT examination. Typically, the Graduate Management Admission Test can be defined as a Computer-Adaptive standardized test in the subjects of Mathematics and the English, in order to determine a student’s aptitude in these subjects, and if he has the capability to succeed academically in graduate business studies. Business schools commonly use the test as one of many selection criteria for admitting students in the field of business administration programs, in the top international colleges. The comprehensive test of GMAT is delivered through computer at various locations around the world.

GMAT Test Papers

The mathematical, verbal and analytical skills of the students are determined via this exam. Candidates have to answer questions in each of the three areas. The test takes about four hours to complete.

Generally, scores are valid for five years, considering from the date of the test until the date of matriculation. Typically, the cut up marks of the exam is 800.

Parts of GMAT Test papers

Below is given the parts of the entire GMAT Test paper.

Analytical Writing Assessment

The Analytical Writing Assessment (AWA) section of the test comprises of two essays. In the first part, you have to analyze an argument and in the second, you have to analyze an issue. The test must be completed by 30 minutes and will read by two readers and each of them marks the essay with a grade from 0–6.

The first essay is to determine the creative writing of the student. The second essay determines the student’s ability to organize, develop, and express ideas with relevant support.

Quantitative Section

The quantitative section is featured with 37 multiple-choice questions and has to be completed by within 75 minutes. The questions of this part are categorised into problem solving and data sufficiency. The scoring of this paper ranges from 0 to 51 points.

Problem solving- The question of this part includes multiple-choice problems in arithmetic, basic algebra, and elementary geometry. You have to solve the problems and choose the correct answer from among five answer choices.

Data Sufficiency- In this part the reasoning ability of the students are judged by using an unusual set of directions. The examinee is given a question with two associated statements, which will be useful for answering. Now, the students have to determine, which one have to use to give the answer.

Verbal Section

This part comprises of 41 multiple-choice questions and the timeline to complete it is 75 minutes. Generally, the questions are categorised into sentence correction, critical reasoning, and reading comprehension.

Sentence correction- The paper determines the candidate’s efficiency with International English grammar, usage, and style.

Critical Reasoning- The test contains brief statements or arguments and the candidate has to analyze the form or content of the statement or argument to determine which one is correct.

Reading comprehension- This part judges the students ability to read critically. The questions in this part are related with the given passage.

For admission in the Graduate schools in the United States and other top universities worldwide, GRE test is conducted. The Graduate Record Examination is a standardized test, which is administered by Educational Testing Service (or ETS) since 1949. Through this exam the verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, analytical writing and critical thinking skills of a student is judged. The General Test of GRE is delivered as a computer adaptive exam, which is run by selected qualified testing centers. The paper-based exam of GRE is intended for countries, where the convenience of computer-based testing is not available. Although the level of emphasis is placed upon GRE scores, yet the scores widely vary between the colleges and the fields of study.

Normally, the cost of GRE ranges from US$160 and 210, depending on the country where the test is conducted. In many cases, students with economic hardships are awarded financial aid but that student has to be a brilliant student.

Structure of the GRE Test

GRE test comprises of four sections- the first one is a writing section, and the other three are multiple-choice style questions. One of the multiple choice style questions will judge the verbal skills of the candidate, while the second is designed to test the quantitative skills and a third exam is an experimental section to judge the analytical skill of the student. The mark obtained in this paper is not included in the reported score. The examination timeline of GRE is 4 hours.

Verbal section

To judge the verbal ability, the question paper comprises of analogies, completions, and reading comprehension passages. The questions are generally, multiple-choice response sections, which are scored on a scale of 200-800. This test is to judge the proficiency of the students in vocabulary. In this paper, there are 30 questions, which should be completed by 30 minutes.

Quantitative section

The quantitative section comprises of multiple questions, which includes problem solving and quantitative comparison questions. It is the test to test the mathematical skills of the students 200-800, in 10-point increments. Typically, the paper consists of 28 questions, and the candidates have to complete it by 45 minutes. It includes14 quantitative comparison questions, 10 discrete quantitative questions and 4 data interpretation questions.

Analytical writing section

This part is designed to determine the analytical skill of the students. The section includes two different essays- an “issue task” and an “argument task”. The writing section is graded on a scale of 0-6, in half-point increments. The essays are given on a computer based word processer but without any advanced feature. You have to prove your skills there. The essays will be checked by three readers.

Experimental section

The experimental section can be a verbal, quantitative, or analytical writing task. Although its score is not count toward the candidate’s real score, yet it is considered, as an important part to qualify the GRE Test. Experimental section is not common to all GRE examinations. The score of this part is used only for research purpose.

Career counseling has now become the most convenient and the cost-effective way to find good career options. However, a series of revisions and updates are made in the career counseling strategies, so that it can be used to help students more effectively. One such step is taking help of the career counseling tests. Many people misinterpret career counseling tests as the replacement of the role of the career counselors, but such tests are usually one of many tools used by counselor’s to help students exploring their suitable career path.

When the career counseling tests are used

Career counseling tests are not always the essentially part of career counseling. Rather it is used, especially when, the counselor finds a particular client is unable to bring out career ideas or interests or is confused about his preferences in their career path. Say, the student has a hobby which could potentially lucrative in the professional field, but that the student us tangled by confusion, they are unable to realize this. Here, the counselor will help them to decide, which will be right for them. Through this process, the students will be able to arrive at their own decisions.

Quality Career Tests

A good quality career test would bring out the interests and hobbies of an individual and use these to turn into a potential and lucrative career options. It is not necessary to take career tests on questionnaire set by a career counselor only, you can take a career test on the internet as well. Make a good research about the career test available in the internet and check out if they are useful and focus on taking quality career counseling tests that are useful to determine the preference rather than any of the many often free and poorly constructed assessments available.

How career counselor helps to find quality test papers

A professional career counselor will help you to find test, which are high quality in terms of reliability and validity of the data provided. Since the quality of the psychological tests can be quite difficult to determine, the trained counselor makes solid research and reviews to find such test papers. Therefore, tests provided by the counselor are high effective; unfortunately, the free career quizzes available in the internet can provide you that reliability and effectiveness.

Popular types of career counseling tests

Presently, two of the more popular career counseling tests are considered useful, due to their reliability and validity of data available. These are Strong Interest Inventory (SII) and Myers Briggs (MBTI) Career Report. You can collect the sample reports of these popular tests from the internet, which can help you to determine the level of detail in the assessment and report prior to subscribing the test.

There is no denying the fact that the career counseling test is definitely a good way to start the process of career exploration, but do consider to take the advice of an experienced career counselor before purchasing any career counseling test papers.