Scores when you failed

[Ponderer]

I remember hearing that for those who failed they would get some kind of breakdown on how they performed on the exam. If this was true, anyone remember how many points they got last year when they failed course 5? I'm trying to gauge my chances with around 55 points.

Thanks much.

[Boink]

They give you a breakdown but it's not terribly useful for trying to come up with a "total" score for how you did. What you get is a score for each question and for the MC as a whole, but they're scaled from 0-10 like the overall mark. i.e. you might find that you got an "8" on a 6-point question but it would take a lot of guesswork to relate that series of grades back to a sum for the exam.

[Anonymous]

I can only partially answer your question. Yes, there is a breakdown when you fail. Instead of showing points, they give you a score from 0 to 10 on each of the essay questions. I wouldn't know how to convert this to points, but I'm sure someone out there can do this for you.

My advice to you is to sit back, enjoy your time off and don't worry about it. There's nothing you can do about it now.

[FIOB]

The ranks for individual questions they give you are designed so you can't figure out how many points you received. I don't know what the big secret is, but the SOA thinks it's worth keeping.

[Steve Grondin]

I don't know if this is their motivation or not, but considering what I remember from my teaching assistant days in college I think this is a fair guess.

When we tried to assign curves in college (ahem, determine the difficulty of the exam), we looked at the distribution of grades to try to find clear breakpoints as part of the process. At my college we didn't have qualifiers (+ or -) on the final grades, which has a more stratifying effect on final GPA, so you can bet those folks with the highest C were lobbying hard to lower the curve.

Consider actuarial exams with their pass/fail nature. Somehow, they have to draw a dividing line between the highest 5 and lowest 6. (I used to think they just took my paper as the highest 5, but they surprised me in the spring by giving me the lowest 6). If someone (really) knew they were the highest 5, don't you think they would make a big fuss?

The info they do provide is helpful while avoiding the "what was my score really" question because in combination with releasing the exam you can determine which areas you need work on and assess how your answering strategy works.