This afternoon I took an programmers’ aptitude test at the University, as one of the steps toward admission into an Information Analyst training program they run. To get in, applicants have to score an A on the aptitude test (overall, about thirty percent of people who take the test score that high), then interview for the two slots a month (more or less) that open in the program. The pay isn’t wonderful—$2,750 a month for the first six months, increasing to $3,000 a month after that—but there are mighty few places these days that you can find paid apprenticeship programs (which is what this amounts to) in IS/IT, not to mention a fairly liberal holiday schedule and full benefits.
The test comprised three parts: series recognition, pattern recognition, and arithmetic reasoning. Scoring is done on the basis of number of right answers as a percentage of number of questions attempted—IOW, leaving an answer blank doesn’t count against you, but getting an answer wrong does count off. Although the expectation is that you won’t finish all the problems, I came very close on the arithmetic reasoning section, and might have finished the pattern recognition section had I not made a silly mistake and gotten on the wrong line, requiring me to waste time going back to find where I’d gone off and re-writing all the answers on the proper lines.
I’ll have my score on Thursday or Friday; if I make the cut (which is, for once, possible—I do very well on standardized tests), I can schedule an interview next week.
(For the superstitious: The lecture hall where we took the test [Calhoun 100] was the same one where I took Texas History After 1914, from Dr. Joe B. Frantz, one of my favorite professors during my whole time at UT. I got an A in that course; perhaps the room still holds a little luck for me.)
Captain Ahab invented the platinum suppository for Little Eva. Fnord.
