thompson-prometric is all messed up... mcat curves

[JoeNamath4Eva]

Since TP is rescheduling people for different months, different locations, etc. like crazy (when they should have gotten the details straight when they first committed to dates and people adjusted their schedules accordingly), I'm wondering 1. are they always this screwed up and if they have a monopoly on the business b/c i'd love to use someone else who has their stuff straight and 2. how is this going to effect curves when people who were scheduled to take the feb exam are pushed back to april and may.

and anyone wonder when the lowest curves will be? like april, may, july, aug, etc.? Next year, I bet there will be a better idea of when the highest curves exist, but this year is all speculation, right?

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[TX_NFS]

1. are they always this screwed up and if they have a monopoly on the business b/c i'd love to use someone else who has their stuff straight and 2. how is this going to effect curves when people who were scheduled to take the feb exam are pushed back to april and may.

and anyone wonder when the lowest curves will be?

1) I'm fairly certain that Thomson Prometric administers all of the tests, though I haven't looked that up. I know I was at one of their centers last month.
2) Err... a Feb. MCAT? I haven't seen any info about a Feb. MCAT administration, unless AAMC put it up recently. The next administration (after the first CBT this past Jan.) is, and to my knowledge has always been, in April.

No idea on the curves. I would imagine there would be better prepared students in August because they have the entire summer open for studying.

 

[Schaden Freud]

You're not curved against people taking the test at your administration. Each question you see has already been curved as an experimental item on a previous exam. Therefore, it doesn't much matter when you take your exam or with whom. This is also evident by the fact that the average score varies from administration to administration. If examinees on a particular date were curved against each other, the mean would always be the same.

Since TP is rescheduling people for different months, different locations, etc. like crazy (when they should have gotten the details straight when they first committed to dates and people adjusted their schedules accordingly), I'm wondering 1. are they always this screwed up and if they have a monopoly on the business b/c i'd love to use someone else who has their stuff straight and 2. how is this going to effect curves when people who were scheduled to take the feb exam are pushed back to april and may.

and anyone wonder when the lowest curves will be? like april, may, july, aug, etc.? Next year, I bet there will be a better idea of when the highest curves exist, but this year is all speculation, right?

 

[chicksdigdocs]

Therefore, it doesn't much matter when you take your exam or with whom.

Do you really speak like that?

And I'm pretty sure the mean is always the same ~24

 

[DiverDoc]

Do you really speak like that?

And I'm pretty sure the mean is always the same ~24

Correct

 

[Schaden Freud]

Actually, the mean is not always the same.

April 04: 25
August 04: 24.3
April 05: 25
August 05: 24.5
April 06: 25.6
August 06: 24.7

Feel free to see for yourself: http://www.aamc.org/students/mcat/examineedata/pubs.htm

And yes, the mean doesn't fluctuate much since the sample size is so huge, but what I said before still stands- if each administration was scaled only to itself, the mean would be exactly 24 every single time.

Do you really speak like that?

And I'm pretty sure the mean is always the same ~24