o the Medical College Admission Tests (MCATs), the Graduate Record Examinations (GREs), and other graduate-level exams stifle biology curriculum reform efforts? Many faculty members and students think so. They insist that courses need to cover a certain amount of material to prepare students for graduate school exams. The developers of the exams see things differently. According to John Olson, an educational consultant who has worked on the MCAT for the Association of American Medical Colleges, test makers have been "revising the amount of science versus other things that are considered important, like communication, critical thinking, and problem solving skills." For example, the last thorough revision of the MCATs in 1991 added essay questions and deemphasized rote memorization. The developers of the GREs also disagree that the use of their tests forces a heavy emphasis on memorization. Though the GRE subject tests, including the biology test and a new test that covers biochemistry and cellular and molecular biology, require a thorough familiarity with their fields, they still emphasize problem-solving and reasoning skills. Also, graduate schools tend to attach more importance to the GRE General Test, which measures verbal, quantitative, and analytical reasoning, than to the subject-matter tests. In a recent survey of biology graduate departments by the Graduate Record Examinations Board, which oversees the GRE program, more than 90 percent of departments said they use the GRE General Test for admission decisions, and those departments gave it a mean importance rating of 3.3 (on a scale of 1 to 4). A total of 59 percent of the departments use the GRE Biology Test, and they ascribe it a mean importance rating of just 2.7. Some faculty members downplay the entire issue. "When students ask me whether my course will prepare them for the GREs, I tell them to take a review course," says Orville Chapman, professor of chemistry and associate dean for educational innovation at University of California-Los Angeles. "They're not going to get a review course from me."

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