That's not to defend standardized tests.
One woman I knew failed her PhD comps twice because of it. Four questions, three hours to write, 2 sentences.
A friend in my undergrad days always showed up at the last minute for the tests in the courses we had together when the rest of us would hang out in the hall. She'd be deathly pale, and would have spent the last 30 minutes in the bathroom upchucking.
In fact, standardized tests are less painful than those two kinds of tests. It took a psych eval to get the woman readmitted to taking her comps a third time under radically de-stressing conditions. And the poor friend who puked her guts out every time a test came along--midterms or final or one of the tests in between, whether on paper or practical, she just had to take the grade she got.
Standardized tests, at least the ones I've seen, have repeated administrations. Screw them up in the spring, take them again in the summer. Then in the fall. Then again in the spring. Until you graduate. (I have seniors this year taking their freshman English tests for the ... um ... 10th time, I guess it is. And every year there's more tutoring and remedial work, even accommodations, to help them to pass their tests.)
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