In article , Mike Coslo
writes:

Reason for the change: To speed up and simplify marking of the exams! By
making
them all multiple choice, the person marking the test did not have to
understand the material at all, just the procedure.

Well, if I had to make a choice, I would rather the person taking the
exam know the material! 8^)

That's always been the intent!

In both 1953 and 1962, the Advanced test was not given, and hams had to
upgrade from General to Extra in a single step. However, there were no
additional operating privileges granted with an Extra, and only about 2% of
US hams in 1962 were Extras. The Advanced was reopened to new issues in
1967.

I have to say that I don't find as much difference between the older
tests and the newer tests as I thought there would be. I was kind of
under the impression (but skeptical) that the older tests were a
regular "hazing" compared to the easy tests we take today.

There are three main differences:

1) The old tests covered a few subjects in depth while the new ones cover a lot
of subjects in much less detail.

2) A person taking the old tests did not know exactly what would be on the
tests, just general areas of knowledge. A person taking today's tests has
access to the exact questions and answers that will be on the test. For
example, we knew there would be questions on Ohm's Law in DC circuits, but we
didn't know how many or what they would look like.

3) The old tests were given at relatively few locations and at times that were
quite inconvenient for most people. The new tests are much more accessible.

End result is that we tended to "overlearn" .

73 de Jim, N2EY



Thanks much for your research, Jim!