Ultimate Test Experts

We Built the Actual Test

Len Swanson spent 35 years at the Educational Testing Service (ETS) developing tests like the SAT, GRE, and GMAT. He served as executive director of technology for ETS and developed the computerized versions of the Graduate Record Examination (GRE), the Graduate Management Admissions Test (GMAT), the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), and the Praxis Assessment Series for teacher licensure. Len is widely considered the father of computerized adaptive testing. He holds more patents in adaptive testing than anyone else who has ever lived.

Robert McKinley is one of the nation's leading experts in the fields of psychometrics and computer-based testing. He was a senior statistician and advisor at ETS and director of computer-based testing at ACT, where he developed the GMAT that is used today. McKinley was also a major figure behind the LSAT, directing research for the Law School Admissions Services and coordinating all LSAT statistical analysis.

Tama Braswell is an expert in statistical programming and statistical analysis methodologies in education. She has worked for nearly 20 years at both ETS and ACT, where she had major responsibility for item analysis, Item Response Theory, and equating and scaling large question pools.

CAT Architects – While at ETS, Len built the world's first major adaptive testing engine, which ETS patented. In 2005, ETS lost the GMAT contract to rival testing organization ACT. ACT had Rob McKinley create a new algorithm, which ACT then patented. Between them, Len and Rob have created the only two major adaptive testing algorithms in the world.

We Wrote the Book

When he was an executive at Kaplan Test prep, Knewton CEO Jose Ferreira led a company-wide re-engineering effort that designed their courses. Now he has designed Knewton from the ground up to include every feature he was unable to include in traditional bricks and mortar courses. Jose has personally designed Knewton's test prep curriculum, and has cooked up all-new strategies students won't find anywhere else (if you're an LSAT student, you will NOT want to miss Knewton's new "restrictiveness" strategy for Logic Games!). Catch him in action—he still teaches classes for each test.

In building the Knewton team, Jose assembled the most talented test prep experts he had ever worked with, including Ed Downey, Dahn Tamir, Brad McIlquham, Chris Rosenbaum (all from Kaplan) and Doug Pierce (from the Princeton Review). Jose, Ed, and Doug are all published authors of test prep books.

We "Broke the Code"

Jose "broke the code" on the GRE exam by inventing a foolproof strategy for one question type. ETS took the extraordinary step of removing the question type from its exams, saying that Jose "broke the code and published it, so we are removing the questions from the test." It is the only time ETS has ever removed a section from one of its exams due to a test-taking strategy.

Next, Jose reverse-engineered ETS’s computer test scoring algorithm, teaching students to skip the last questions in each section and using that extra time on the first questions. ETS was forced to revise the scoring system. Jose also proved that early computerized tests were highly susceptible to cheating, forcing ETS to suspend its tests for months to improve them.

According to Len Swanson, "Jose is the only person ever to force ETS to fundamentally redesign their tests."