How many questions you can get wrong

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1ive2die

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  1. Pharmacy Student
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There have been numerous questions about exactly how many questions you can get wrong on each sub-section to still score x percentile and so far I have not found any definative answers. However after doing the PCAT practice tests from the pearson website I think I know how you can make a rough estimation.

On the website after you complete a sub-section it gives you a score report. On the score report it gives you a percentile range of where your score falls. It is a range of 20.

For verbal it seems your actual score is a good representation of your percentile score. For example on one of my tests I got an 83% raw score in verbal. My predicted percentile ranged from 73 to 93 with the middle of the range being 83.

For BIO and RC the middle of the percentile range seemed to be about 5% below the raw score. So if you got 80% in bio or RC your predicted percentile would be from 65 to 85

For CHEM and Quantitive however, your percentile score seems to be much higher than your raw score. For instance an 80% raw score puts you anywhere from 80-100 percentile according to pearson`s score report.

For those who have done the practice tests, can you confirm and is this a good way to judge how many you can afford to get wrong on each section to achieve your desired percentile score?
 
There have been numerous questions about exactly how many questions you can get wrong on each sub-section to still score x percentile and so far I have not found any definative answers. However after doing the PCAT practice tests from the pearson website I think I know how you can make a rough estimation.

On the website after you complete a sub-section it gives you a score report. On the score report it gives you a percentile range of where your score falls. It is a range of 20.

For verbal it seems your actual score is a good representation of your percentile score. For example on one of my tests I got an 83% raw score in verbal. My predicted percentile ranged from 73 to 93 with the middle of the range being 83.

For BIO and RC the middle of the percentile range seemed to be about 5% below the raw score. So if you got 80% in bio or RC your predicted percentile would be from 65 to 85

For CHEM and Quantitive however, your percentile score seems to be much higher than your raw score. For instance an 80% raw score puts you anywhere from 80-100 percentile according to pearson`s score report.

For those who have done the practice tests, can you confirm and is this a good way to judge how many you can afford to get wrong on each section to achieve your desired percentile score?


There are 10 experimental questions in EACH section that DONT count. so technically you can miss a ****load and still make a 99 comp. more power to u😀
 
No way! If there are really 10 experimental questions per section that do not contribute to the score, then that just made my day...and wait until I get my score much less stressful. How do you know that it is exactly 10 though? Can you send me the link so I can verify that astounding information?
 
I believe it is only 8 experimental questions per the candidate info book, page 23. Still, it's better than NO experimental questions after having that organic chem beatdown!
 
yea but you have an equal chance of missing them as you do the other once, so it doesnt help anyone out. like, avg persons would miss 4 of them and get 4 of them right, thus having no net effect on the score. but, there is the off chance that you missed only the experimental questions which would be awesome, but also the chance that you missed only counted questions which would be a shaftttt.
 
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