cindee103 Wrote:Hi, I am new to this type of test-taking. This may be a dumb question, but do the cut scores mean the percentage grade you received on the test or the number of correct answers? Thanks in advance to anyone who can help me with this.
It's actually NEITHER!
It is impossible to figure out, from your score, what percentage you got correct, or how many questions you answered correctly.
The score you receive upon completion of each exam is a 'scaled' score. You can tell that the score is scaled because it is impossible to score less than 20 and impossible to score higher than 80. For example, there would be no way to score higher than 80% or to answer more than 80 questions correctly. Obviously that can't be right. So the score must be scaled.
Here's how it works....very roughly!
1. A SAMPLE bunch of college kids take the actual semester-long course.
2. The SAMPLE bunch of college kids then take the CLEP or DANTES exam.
3. The scores of those kids who got an A on the course, a B on the course, and a C on the course are noted and statistically analyzed.
4. A formula is created which delineates how many correct answers are needed for an exam-taker to do statistically as well as an A student, a B student, and a C student (from the sample group). Any exam-taker who doesn't perform at least as well as a C student, fails the exam.
The exact formula for each exam is not known to us (and it's a different formula for each exam). But, according to statistical norms, it can be expected that correctly answering about half or more of the questions on each exam will result in a basic pass.
Lastly, because the scores are scaled, there is likely to be a GROUPING of raw scores for each scaled score. For example (I'm making up numbers here), a scaled score of 50 might be earned by EVERYONE who correctly answers between 48 and 53 questions out of 103. A scaled score of 51 might be earned by EVERYONE who correctly answers between 54 and 56 questions out of 103....and so on.
Hope that helps,
Snazzlefrag