What’s the hardest test you’ve ever taken?

[Brandon]

Straight forward question.

SAT, MCAT, ASVAB, certain degree or industry? Driving test? Specialized test? Colorblind test? Test of wills from your wife?

[Jason]

I just remember chemistry in high school being a real bitch

[arch stanton]

I was applying for a contractor gig a few years back and they put me in a room with some materials and instructions and I had to perform several types of wire repairs and terminations then check some circuits using different types of testers. It wouldn’t have been nearly as bad but I broke my reading glasses. Had to borrow some at lunch time or I’d have failed miserably. It was 8 hours of solid work on the test and I didn’t even end up taking the job

[Tank]

2 hours ago, cals said:

The bar exam is 3 full days long and so physically tiring you have to pop Advils so your hand doesn’t totally cramp up.  I of course drank 12 Miller lites at night between the test days.

that seems kinda low for an attorney.

[Tank]

6 minutes ago, cals said:

I don’t know, it was per night.  I’ll try to do better for you though.

i appreciate the effort. i think that's why we're friends.

[Jason]

3 hours ago, cals said:

The bar exam is 3 full days long and so physically tiring you have to pop Advils so your hand doesn’t totally cramp up.  I of course drank 12 Miller lites at night between the test days.

Did you pass it your first shot?

[failos]

The LSAT, mostly due to preparation—but I got a 165 on it. Didn’t even go to law school, so ultimately a waste of time.

The hardest course exam I took was my Advanced Algorithms final exam in grad school. 3 hours of writing and explaining pseudo code.

[Jason]

10 minutes ago, failos said:

The LSAT, mostly due to preparation—but I got a 165 on it. Didn’t even go to law school, so ultimately a waste of time.

The hardest course exam I took was my Advanced Algorithms final exam in grad school. 3 hours of writing and explaining pseudo code.

Sounds awful 

[tdawg87]

SAT for me.

I know that's sad, but I barely graduated High School. Had to take 80% of my classes at home because I couldn't function at school anymore.

I was never good at tests or school work anyways. The SAT was like the final boss of a video game I had barely played and I only had 1 life to beat him.

I don't remember my score but I know it was really bad. 

I wouldn't have lasted a semester in college anyways.

[failos]

1 hour ago, Jason said:

Sounds awful 

Truly. It’s an interesting subject, but I’ve never actually had to practically use it in my job. Though, I suppose I have a better understanding of which algorithms to use, and which ones are fast/slow.

[failos]

1 hour ago, tdawg87 said:

SAT for me.

I know that's sad, but I barely graduated High School. Had to take 80% of my classes at home because I couldn't function at school anymore.

I was never good at tests or school work anyways. The SAT was like the final boss of a video game I had barely played and I only had 1 life to beat him.

I don't remember my score but I know it was really bad. 

I wouldn't have lasted a semester in college anyways.

Damn…sorry to hear that.

[Brandon]

8 hours ago, cals said:

Did… did I just channel wicked?

No, because after the test you would have went to Prague and had 73 year old geyser water with two chicks you met on the flight from Estonia.

[AngelsFaninGA]

CFA. But a lot of that was due to terrible study habits and procrastination. 

I've heard the actuarial exam is much worse. 

[Taylor]

Midterm and final in my mass communication law class senior year at Pepperdine. Our professor (a nerdy white dude named Michael Jordan) modeled them after law school finals. Those were a doozy.

[Tank]

i took chemistry my first quarter of my freshman year in college. didn't understand jack squat. dropped the class before the quarter ended because i was so bloody lost. took it again a year later and did much better.

i was in one of the first groups of students to take the CBEST, a california state test to be able to teach. none of us really had any idea on what to expect, so when i sat down for the exam, i was more than a little surprised to find it was pretty easy. i cruised through the english section (only missed two questions). for the math section, i thought i was going to be in big trouble. i kept waiting for the really hard algebra questions, but there weren't any. ended up missing only one question in the section. there was also an essay section and i nailed it - it asked about a life experience i had had that made me a different person when it was over than i had been when it started. well, that ended up being a pretty easy question for me as just two years earlier i had taken a year off to work as a boys dean at a boarding school. it was an absolute soft toss question and i crushed it.

[Don]

I’ve always been good at taking tests. Not sure why. I remember a few physical anthropology tests in college being tough, but I think it was just that prof. People were stoked to finish with anything above a 60%. I remember EG2 having some tough ones as well (basically a meteorology course). I never really worried or crammed though. I did my work in the courses and figured if I knew the material well enough in my mind it would all be good.

[T.G.]

Sobriety test for Chuck.

[T.G.]

Seriously...

Last year, in the early stages of the pandemic, I came down with fever and chills.  I was sure I had Covid.  I went and got tested. While the test wasn't hard at all... the waiting was.  My wife and I take care of her mom and I couldn't afford to be sick.  Luckily, I was fine - but the waiting was really hard.

Not exactly what you were looking for.... but I can't really think of a test that was difficult.

[Lhalo]

Covid test.

[Brandon]

Like Don, I was always good at tests....GATE entrance test, SAT, ASVAB, premed entrance exam all were really high with no study and literally walking in and sitting down.

But when I think of legit bombs and holy shit bad results, ironically when I took the real estate test as a kid out of high school I failed twice before passing (chalk it up to not studying and thinking it would be simple like the rest) and my advanced math classes in premed. Those were fucked up because I was on an expedited trimester program that each day was one class for five hours straight (5-10pm after working 8am-3pm), so there was no babying into various steps of equations and it would be things like quadratic equations, trig, linear equations, and theoretical and algorithm concepts all in the same day. It was rough and my tests were so bad. I got lucky to where a chick from Iran liked me so she tutored me in Calabasas on Saturdays (aka did all my work so she could spend more personal time) and I would go in and bomb every test and final. I should have failed, but with her course work I got by.......and also a life lesson where I learned that if you pay for school with cash that they let a lot slide and magically give you a C. Those tests haunt me.

Outside of that, I had a few pregnancy test scares. 

[Gavin]

Never really struggled with tests. That said, the GMAT was probably the most difficult test I've taken. Mainly because it is computer adaptive (questions get harder as you answer consecutive questions correctly and vice versa), and I'd sometimes mindfuck myself if I got multiple questions in a row that were easy. I guess some of my economic theory exams during my undergrad were pretty tough as well.