Is the Unified State Exam (USE) a good or bad thing?

As for "discipline"—yes, I have no words... Last year, when I was taking the Unified State Exam (USE) in biology, the proctor almost kicked me out of the restroom because my belt buckle was clinking too loudly—claiming that I was pulling out a cheat sheet...

And the essay for the USE in Russian is pure madness. Or don't call it an essay. Any essay should be a free expression of one's thoughts, but here it's just stupidly fitting your "arguments" into an official form... And it's wrong to require exactly 3 arguments to support your "opinion" regarding the problem in the text—you could provide one, but make it a strong one... Instead, poor graduates are forced to learn how to fluff their writing...

But overall, the USE, at least for Russian and biology, is manageable (although I am also all for the traditional exam format for literature and history)... I scored 83 and 75 points respectively—and got in without any problems... Although that was mostly because my teachers simply "drilled" me on how to solve USE-style tasks...