Robert Dawson wrote:
> An obvious approach that would seem to give the advantages hoped for
>from the focussed test without the disadvantages would be just to group
>questions in the original test in roughly increasing order of
>difficulty. One might (I'm not so sure that this would be a good idea)
>put between each group a rubric along the lines of
>
>===============================================================
> PROGRESS CHECKPOINT 1
> If you have got the right answers to 15 of the preceding 20 questions
>you have already passed (50%).
> If you have got the right answers to 18 of the preceding 20 questions
>you have already got at least a C- (60%).
> The questions below are mostly more advanced. Right answers to any of
>them will raise your numerical mark further and may raise your letter
>grade.
> KEEP ON GOING!
>
> Alternatively one could use icons - say Happy Faces - to identify a set
>of recommended easier questions that nobody should quit without
>attempting, if there was a reason to use the order to encode something
>else.
>
> -Robert Dawson
If only the scoring were that rational. It isn't. MA scores the test on a 200
to 280 point scale, with 240 being proficient. Since 3/4 of the questions are
multiple choice, the exam is scaled so that the 1st 10 correct answers will
place you at 200, the minimum. So your first benchmark would have to be.
You've just passed the first 1/4 of the exam. If you answered all of these
questions correctly, your score is now 200 on the 200 to 280 point scale. Each
additional correct answer will be weighted to count as x.x scaled points, with
the scaling coefficient to be determined only after this tests' core questions
are compared with the previous 3 years' core questions (a similar number of
correct core questions on the exam will earn the same scaled score for each
year's exam).
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