Ms. Guerrera, 28, was until May the associate vice president for marketing of the Princeton Review, a book publishing and test-preparation company in New York.

"Computers can judge only what's been fed into them," said Trent Anderson, a spokesman for Kaplan Educational Centers, a major test-preparation company.

Kaplan Educational Centers, a major test-preparation company, will open a 35,000-square-foot center tomorrow in Manhattan.

Or even from the investments the parent company has made in such businesses as television stations, cable systems or the Stanley H. Kaplan Educational Center, the test-preparation company.

John Katzman, president of Princeton Review, a competing test-preparation company in New York, said he saw a potential conflict in Dr. Hamer's dual roles.

In August Mrs. McLellan will join Kaplan, the educational test-preparation company in New York, as an associate analyst for corporate strategy.

But increasingly, counselors and test-preparation companies are advising students to take screening tests that will help them decide where to apply their energies, based on which approach to testing yields better results.

Later that year, the Kaplan Educational Centers, a leading test-preparation company, sent 22 employees to take the graduate examination over several days in 9 cities.

But the Princeton Review, one of the nation's largest test-preparation companies, said the average score among 8,000 students it coached for the April test rose by 69 points to 1,231.

Most of the information is available in test preparation books and courses offered by the Princeton Review and other test-preparation companies.