For Grad School Hopefuls, a Test of Personality

Graduate school applicants have long stressed out over the strength of their test scores, college transcripts, and letters of recommendation. Now another less scholastic element might be added to that mix: their personalities.

Based on a decade of research, the Educational Testing Service (ETS) has started offering a Web-based test called the personal potential index, which lets students ask recommenders to rank them in six different areas—knowledge and creativity, communication skills, teamwork, resilience, planning and organization, and ethics and integrity—on a scale of "below average" to "truly exceptional." Students can then electronically send the evaluation reports to their choice of graduate schools, paying $20 per report after the first four.

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