Here’s a fun item (dated 2003) from my collection of standardized testing ephemera. For a few years, this “TOEFL POWERPREP” CD was mailed to everyone who registered for the classic TOEFL (the one that came before the TOEFL iBT). On the back is an advertisement for the TOEFL ScoreItNow service. For a fee, users could upload their practice essays and get a score from the cutting edge ETS e-rater. Sound familiar? It’s not too different from the TOEFL TestReady product currently sold by ETS.
I think the CD was also sold via ETS’s storefront on Digital River (remember them?). It was advertised heavily in ESL Magazine (remember that?). In the world of test prep, there has always been a great demand for score estimates. Students have always been obsessed with discovering their current level… as precisely as possible. Michael A. Pyle, who authored the Cliff’s Notes guide to TOEFL from 1982 to 2001, even offered an evaluation service by snail mail – students preparing for the test mailed in their essays and received (some weeks later) a corrected version and a score estimate.
