each section worth 1/6 of total?

[pear]

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Hello.

I've read that each section is weighted the same.

But just to confirm, since there're 7 sections but one of them (one of the writing sections) doesn't count, does that mean that each section is worth 1/6 of the total score?

 

[thesituation559]

Nope I head chem has the most weight to it. I hope it's true as I have been scoring the highest on this section than any of the rest lol

 

[pear]

Really? Does that mean that chem has more questions (i thought i read somewhere that each section has 48 questions...) or is each question weighted more (i thought i read somewhere that each question is weighted the same... or maybe that was referring to each question within a section...)?

Does anyone know the exact proportion of our mark each section is worth then?

 

[harmonidrum]

Nope I head chem has the most weight to it. I hope it's true as I have been scoring the highest on this section than any of the rest lol

I doubt this is the case, from what I've seen, the sections seem to be weighted equally. Some of the sections may be more difficult (i.e., the norm group performance was lower for that section), but that would just mean that you would get more raw points for a lower percentage of raw correct answers, please note that this does not weight the chemistry section any greater than the others.

 

[klj5269]

The actual scoring of the test does not weigh any section more than another. What you may have heard is that some schools place more emphasis on one section or another. For example, my number one choice school emphasizes your chem score since (duh) pharmacy is a lot of chemistry and they want to make sure you don't completely suck at it.

 

[xtsukiyox]

My impression is that the composite compares your overall score versus everyone else to compute your percentile, rather than comparing each test score in a percentile fashion & averaging those scores. That's why it may be confusing.

An example I pulled out my.. uh, thin air: while you may have gotten like a 30 on RC but a 90-something on everything else, that 30 RC may be separated by 1 or 2 wrong answers, so it's really not that far behind the curve. So your composite may be high 80s / low 90s if you scored very well on everything else.

This seems to be consistent with what people are posting & makes sense to me - but it's not based on any sort of official knowledge.

 

[harmonidrum]

that 30 RC may be separated by 1 or 2 wrong answers, so it's really not that far behind the curve.

I have a really hard time believing a 30th percentile is "1 or 2" answers below everyone else in a group comprising over 8000 test takers in 2008.

 

[xtsukiyox]

I have a really hard time believing a 30th percentile is "1 or 2" answers below everyone else in a group comprising over 8000 test takers in 2008.

Hence why I said I was pulling the example out of my, uh, thin air. I meant 30 vs, say, 50, not like 90. It seems that RC is one of the sections people typically score with fewer wrong, so it's really easy to miss one and drop a bunch of percentiles. At least, this is what happened on the Pearson practice tests for me and seems to hold true with my PCAT experience.

 

[pear]

The actual scoring of the test does not weigh any section more than another. What you may have heard is that some schools place more emphasis on one section or another. For example, my number one choice school emphasizes your chem score since (duh) pharmacy is a lot of chemistry and they want to make sure you don't completely suck at it.

Oh wow... I thought the school just looks at the overall score. Guess I better figure out which section my school puts emphasis on, not how pearson weights the sections. Thanks for the warning!

 

[klj5269]

I have a really hard time believing a 30th percentile is "1 or 2" answers below everyone else in a group comprising over 8000 test takers in 2008.

Standard deviation is probably smaller for the reading section, but not that small. You should have learned this in stats for the quant section 😉