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For those with 90%+ in a section
Started by ffpickle
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Yeah, it's hard to say.
They usually take a group of people who wrote the PCAT the year before and average out all the marks to be used as a standard. So if you scored 90% then you'd be better than 90% of the 2007 PCAT students in that subsection.
But other than that, it's pretty much up in the air as to how many questions you need to get right to get in the 90th percentile. It won't be shown in your score report.
They usually take a group of people who wrote the PCAT the year before and average out all the marks to be used as a standard. So if you scored 90% then you'd be better than 90% of the 2007 PCAT students in that subsection.
But other than that, it's pretty much up in the air as to how many questions you need to get right to get in the 90th percentile. It won't be shown in your score report.
They don't tell you but be aware, 40 questions each section are "real", they count for score, & 8 questions are "experimental", they might go on a future test or they might not. And you never know which is which.
On the August 07 test [only one i took] there were all these incredibly hard calculus questions in the math section, i was guessing that a lot of those were experimental as there were no pcat prep materials covering that. In general though you have to treat each question as For Real.
Based on what i did & other ppl's posting, it looks the pcat-takers on average answer Reading Comprehension with the most right answers, getting just a couple more wrong on that & your score plummets. Math on the other hand you can guess guess guess and still get a decent score cuz that's what i did. I rank them like this, least room-for-error is #1.
1) Reading
2) Bio
3) Verbal
4) Chem
5) Math
My scores in the 90s were Bio99 - might have missed 2-3, Verbal 98 - might have missed 3-4, Chem91 - probably missed at least 6 or 7.
Math: I marked every answer, guessed on 20-25 questions & scored 76.
On the August 07 test [only one i took] there were all these incredibly hard calculus questions in the math section, i was guessing that a lot of those were experimental as there were no pcat prep materials covering that. In general though you have to treat each question as For Real.
Based on what i did & other ppl's posting, it looks the pcat-takers on average answer Reading Comprehension with the most right answers, getting just a couple more wrong on that & your score plummets. Math on the other hand you can guess guess guess and still get a decent score cuz that's what i did. I rank them like this, least room-for-error is #1.
1) Reading
2) Bio
3) Verbal
4) Chem
5) Math
My scores in the 90s were Bio99 - might have missed 2-3, Verbal 98 - might have missed 3-4, Chem91 - probably missed at least 6 or 7.
Math: I marked every answer, guessed on 20-25 questions & scored 76.
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Yes you are right. I forget the exact cut-offs.
nah. i got 97th percentile with around 70 something percent of the questions right in Kaplan's book. Granted I took Kaplan's practice test before studying, but I only studied the chemistry anyways. Differs for different people though of course.
Percents are not the same as percentiles. If a test has 100 questions and the highest score is 20, you could be (depending on all the other scores) in the 95th+ percentile if you got 19 questions right and 81 wrong.
Percentile: compare your score to the scores of others taking the same exact test.
Percent: the questions you answered correct out of the total number of questions.
Yep. Except with the PCAT they actually compare your score with test-takers from a few years ago for some reason.
