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MAT Flashcards. Proven MAT test flashcards raise your score on the MAT test. Guaranteed. Hundreds of graduate schools and programs in North America rely on The Miller Analogies Test (MAT) as an admissions/aptitude exam for applicants. The MAT exam is very challenging, and there are complaints by some groups that it is actually too difficult, and should be scrapped, as it keeps many people from pursuing their dreams of going to graduate school because their Miller Analogies score is too low. However, graduate schools and programs are very reluctant to quit using the exam, and they have a very good justification for their continued reliance on it. The plain fact is that the MAT is very good at predicting which candidates are likely to achieve success in a graduate program and in a professional career, and which ones aren’t. Because there are far more applicants for grad school admissions every year than there are openings, there is no way graduate programs can admit everyone who applies. Also, many applicants simply don’t have the intellect required to do graduate level work. These two facts make it absolutely necessary to use an effective screening test, and the Miller Analogies exam serves this purpose very well. One of the reasons it’s so effective at predicting academic success in graduate school is that it’s radically different than the average standardized test. Many of these other exams focus mostly on measuring how much information and/or skills a student has acquired. In many ways, taking one of these tests is about the same as appearing on the TV quiz show Jeopardy, because persons who have memorized lots of facts, figures and formulas will do very well. These tests have their place, as minimum levels of acquired knowledge are essential for success in any academic pursuit, but they are limited. In contrast, the MAT measures a person’s ability to do analytical thinking and capacity for verbal comprehension, instead of one’s skill at memorizing facts. While acquired knowledge is important (and essential for success on the MAT test), the ability to reason logically is even more important for success in grad school. Repeated studies have demonstrated this conclusively. Other studies have proven that using analogies is the best way of testing for analytical reasoning abilities. A person who performs poorly on the Miller Analogies Test is extremely likely to have a great deal of difficulty doing graduate level academic work, and a person who achieves a high MAT score is very likely to excel at graduate study. These are the reasons that use of the MAT has become so widespread, and why it will almost certainly continue to be a common grad school application requirement for the foreseeable future.
by Enoch Morrison
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