BYU Testing Center

The BYU Testing Center, the largest college testing center in the nation [http://testing.byu.edu/info/ About the BYU Testing Center ] ] , is located in the Heber J. Grant Building at Brigham Young University. It serves the purpose of administering tests to students. Tests are often administered in the Testing Center instead of during class time. By doing this, instructors allow students to take as much time as they need for the test, do not waste class time on testing, and allow students to take tests at their convenience.

Building History

The Heber J. Grant building was originally built as the BYU library. It was dedicated in 1925 by Heber J. Grant, the first building completed while Franklin S. Harris was president of BYU. Designed primarily as the library, the second floor where the testing center is located today was the library while the first floor contained classrooms, as it still does to the present. [cite book |last= Bergera|first= Gary James |coauthors= Ronald Priddis |title= |publisher= Signature Books |year= 1985 ]

Current Functions

The main portion of the Testing Center is a large main testing room, which originally served as BYU's library, and now is filled with approximately 650 desks. Students enter through the center's administration area. The center also has a few smaller rooms with even more desks (one of which, the music room, has soft classical music playing through wall-mounted speakers), study hall rooms downstairs for test preparation, and faculty offices. When students exit the testing center, they can see their scores immediately on TV screens on the bottom floor (for multiple-choice tests). Earlier, those taking multiple-choice tests waited for a moment or two in the administration area to receive a printout of their results, which usually resulted in the exit area being crowded.

In order to avoid long lines during Finals, the testing center opens remote locations around campus. Generally the Wilkinson Student Center (WSC) serves all religion finals while the Joseph Smith Building (JSB) Auditorium is used for larger classes such as American Heritage. Lines are usually shortest before 11:00 AM, in the early afternoon, and after 8:00 PM.

Incidentally, the Testing Center served as BYU's main method of enforcing its dress and grooming standards. However, after receiving National Testing Center status (allowing the Testing Center to administer standardized tests from outside the university), the Testing Center is unable to enforce the University Honor Code.

References

External links

* [http://www.ncta-testing.org/ National College Testing Association]
* [http://www.byu.edu/ Official website of BYU]
* [http://testing.byu.edu/ BYU Testing Services]