How are the marks calculated?

[lidawg007]

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I recently just received my pcat scores and i was wondering on how they scaled the scores. Some say they scale it according to the results of the 1998 class. Some say they scale it to other applicants writing the test at the same time, while others say they scale it according to how difficult the test is? I know that they scale the scores between 200-600 with 400 being the average/median. Does anyone actually know how they do this?

 

[triumphbr]

I assumed the had a running average for each different test and compared your results to that average.

IE - Some average percent correct on the math, call it 53% for our purposes with whatever standard deviation.. say 15. You get 68% correct. They do all those nifty smifty statistics calculations on it to give you a percent. If I remember how to work my calculator from stats class that would put .841 of the scores below what you scored... giving you an 84th percentile score. I put no guarantees on that number though because it's been awhile since statistics and that class was about the most boring, PITA class I can remember.

Or I could be completely off and they just average it out against the rest of the people taking that same test that same day at different locations.... I think that would be too simple though.