The Two Sections RankHigh Does Not Prepare

The State's guide publishes seven subject areas. RankHigh prepares five of them in the formats the guide describes. It does not prepare the other two, and this page says why rather than leaving you to notice.

Visualization — matching faces

This section shows a photograph of a face and four more photographs, each altered in some way, and asks which is the same person judged on facial structure and features alone. The guide tells candidates to disregard differences in skin tone, eye color and shadowing, because those are artifacts of printing and angle rather than of the face.

Preparing that honestly needs a library of faces with controlled structural changes. RankHigh has no such engine, will not use photographs of real people to build one, and does not think a drawn approximation would train the skill the section measures. So the section is absent and named rather than approximated.

Situational judgment — and this one is a matter of principle

This section describes a workplace situation, lists several responses to it, and asks you to rate how effective each response would be on a four-point scale. The guide notes that the same rating may apply to more than one response.

The State publishes no answer key for it. Its guide prints 'the correct answer to this sample question is choice X' for every other subject area, twice each, and prints nothing at all for its four situational-judgment sample responses. Its own 30-question practice test covers six areas and leaves this one out.

So there is no published standard to teach against. RankHigh will not invent one: a preparation product that keys judgment items on its own opinion is selling a guess as an answer, and a candidate who learns that guess may well do worse than one who reasons from the scenario in front of them.

What that means for what you are buying

Five of seven subject areas, prepared in the guide's own formats, with worked explanations. The examination's item count, its duration and how the areas weigh into a final score are not published by the State, so RankHigh does not state a percentage of the examination — the honest figure is a count of areas, and it is five.

If that is not enough for you, the State's guide is free, and its own practice test is worth working through whatever else you use.

Sources

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