Scoring and "experimental" passages

[Aelitis]

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I am still confused about this topic.
Is the experimental passages just not scored? How does it effect your final raw score?
I mean...what about the people who spent TIME on it and got it right?

Please explain this to me.

 

[iwant2doctor]

According to the AAMC, experimentals don't count toward your score. I think it means just that. There's really no point figuring out which one is experimental, just do your best in each and hope for the best.

 

[letaps]

so 1 out of the 7 in the verbal is experimental?....and is this only for verbal?

 

[Aelitis]

so how is the raw score then obtained if a whole passage is discarded? does everyone just get those points?

 

[capn jazz]

There's no difference if they give everyone the points or if they take the points out of the calculation. Either way, it doesn't affect your score.

 

[Aelitis]

There would be a difference if it shafted people out of a good score who spent more time on the "experimental" sections instead of the sections that counted.

 

[capn jazz]

The experimental passage does NOT go into your score - you don't get the points. They're only there for AAMC to see how people do on them, but your score will be completely unrelated. If you lost points on other sections because of the experimental section, that sucks, but they're not going to give you the experimental points to make up for it.

So either everyone starts with a base score of 7 or those 7 qs don't count, but the end result is identical either way.

 

[BerkReviewTeach]

According to the AAMC, experimentals don't count toward your score. I think it means just that. There's really no point figuring out which one is experimental, just do your best in each and hope for the best.

Where does AAMC list this in writing? For years I have been looking for anything official where they speficially say that there are passages that will definitely not count towards your score. My boss had a packet from an AAMC conference from back in the late 90s where they talked about the scoring, but I assume that's outdated now. It would be great to get something up to date that formally says exactly how they grade the exam.

I was under the impression that they throw questions out from the non field tested passages if they have statistical descrepencies, but that some of those questions went towards your score.

 

[iwant2doctor]

Where does AAMC list this in writing? For years I have been looking for anything official where they speficially say that there are passages that will definitely not count towards your score. My boss had a packet from an AAMC conference from back in the late 90s where they talked about the scoring, but I assume that's outdated now. It would be great to get something up to date that formally says exactly how they grade the exam.

I was under the impression that they throw questions out from the non field tested passages if they have statistical descrepencies, but that some of those questions went towards your score.

I came across it while reading the MCAT Essential. On page 4, in the paragraph after Verbal Reasoning:

'Please note that each multiple-choice section will include some experimental items that do not count toward your score.'

According to some people on the forum, a whole passage in each section is designated as experimental. In here, it just says some 'items'. I don't know which way this thing works.

 

[browns]

Well, if you were to get very picky about wording, it states that each section contains some experimental items. Now, because the statement references an individual section, if an entire passage were to be experimental, it would be worded to the effect that each section will include an experimental item to make it singular. The way it is worded, it makes it sound like the questions are experimental and possibly not the passage itself, which falls in line with BerkReviewTech's theory. At least to me, it wouldn't make sense for the writers to design a test with passages of 6-7 questions each and then throw out the entire passage. Statistically speaking, it wouldn't appear to be a valid form of evaluation given the many confounding variables that come with throwing in an entire experimental passage into the test. Just my .02 cents.

 

[LostInStudy]

Well, if you were to get very picky about wording, it states that each section contains some experimental items. Now, because the statement references an individual section, if an entire passage were to be experimental, it would be worded to the effect that each section will include an experimental item to make it singular. The way it is worded, it makes it sound like the questions are experimental and possibly not the passage itself, which falls in line with BerkReviewTech's theory. At least to me, it wouldn't make sense for the writers to design a test with passages of 6-7 questions each and then throw out the entire passage. Statistically speaking, it wouldn't appear to be a valid form of evaluation given the many confounding variables that come with throwing in an entire experimental passage into the test. Just my .02 cents.

This makes sense to me. Then you wouldn't have "wasted" you time doing an entire experimental passage and some of the questions you did would still count but not all.

 

[BerkReviewTeach]

I came across it while reading the MCAT Essential. On page 4, in the paragraph after Verbal Reasoning:

'Please note that each multiple-choice section will include some experimental items that do not count toward your score.'

According to some people on the forum, a whole passage in each section is designated as experimental. In here, it just says some 'items'. I don't know which way this thing works.

That is the only spot I've ever seen them mention scoring of the non field-tested questions on their website. But as browns pointed out, their wording is quite general and it's done in such a way where they can throw away anything. There is no way to conclude that an entire passage would be thrown out intentionally.

If you think about it, depending on the placement of such a passage in the exam, it could seriously impact the scores of test takers, and invalidate the exam's value.

Now if you read SDN after exams, you sometimes find that one person will mention a passage on their exam that someone else didn't have, despite the two people having identical passages other than those two. You can probably conclude that those two are experimental passages, but they never seem like they are that much more difficult or bizarre than any other passage. That would seem like the only case where they might not count an entire passage, because then they'd have separate curves for people on the same day. Then again, that might be a security measure to protect against the sharing of information across time zones.

My understanding, and this is based on their wording from years ago, is that each exam will include a mixture of recylced and non field-tested passages as well as some free standing questions. The recycled and the stand alone questions all get graded. The non field-tested ones are scrutinized for statistical validity after the exam has been given, and at that time they decide what questions will be removed from the scoring, based on the statistical data and and post-exam student feedback about errors. I assume the only reason they would throw out an entire pssage would be because of a major error that impacted how people answered the questions. Again, this is not concrete and we are all speculating, but I feel pretty confident that it's done this way based on the very little real information I've seen/heard/picked up.

But at the end of the day, it doesn't relly matter, because you can't do anything about it.

 

[iwant2doctor]

Yeh that's been my understanding since the beginning, since it says 'some items' not passage, so I took it as random questions from different passages. But I started doubting it when a lot of people on the forum seem to unanimously agree on the 'experimental passage' theory. As I said, I don't know which way this thing works.

What you proposed about post-game analysis of the experimental items could be true. However, they did assert in the MCAT Essential that 'Experimentals do NOT count toward your score' without much elaboration. I would just take it the way it is worded.

To us as testtakers, it doesn't really change anything.

 

[FIREitUP]

i don't know...i had a funky passage on blocks versus hoops that i had no clue about, so i'm hoping they have experimental passages (this was a passage that others didn't have)