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The SOA exams seem to have fairer standards. The CAS standards are kinda crazy. The CAS questions don’t really accomplish what they try to set out.
The reason that I heard is because the new format is taking longer to grade. The only reasonable conclusion I can come out of it, is that they are finding a lot of reference errors, where it is clear what the person intended. This might actually be a good thing because the CAS said before they would not guess what people intended. But maybe they are finding that they do need to do a better job grading.
I have sat for exam 6 twice, 7 twice, 8 twice, and now 9 twice. My personal opinion is that 7-9 are way harder than exam 6. Exam 9 to me is my personal hardest. While 7 and 8 have harder material, the questions on 9 are the worst.
My theory in the exam committee. Is that the prior leadership in the committee was more transparent and timely. Also the pass marks were higher under them. Exams results were released as soon as they were ready in a staggered fashion. Not waiting to 2pm on a specific day for all at once. But, 10 am for a given exam one day, then the next day.
Once the new leadership came in IQs became a thing and kept on increasing in magnitude of difficulty and at the same time the pass percentage for exam 8 continued to get lower.
Part of the reconciliation process the exam committee does is review the MQC that they had as an apriori before any tests were graded, and the mqc after tests were graded. My impression was the past leadership was more willing to lower the MQC and adapt.
In regards to the May tests. I imagine they care most about getting to a normal schedule. Whether people have enough time to study or not probably wasn’t fully considered.
My guess is that they never had the meeting and intended on waiting a month to have it. Then people complained so they are running the statistics and reports they need for the meeting. And the meeting is 1/13 or 1/14 now.
CAS released a statement about results.
https://www.casact.org/press/index.cfm?fa=viewArticle&articleID=4916
I believe each grader grades two questions with someone else. And then they reconcile the grades between each person.
I think the CAS prefers when one of the graders is also the question writer. I don’t think that is always the case though.
The results for MAS should never take longer than two weeks. You don’t even run it through the scantron now. It is really a question of what is the pass mark and how many answers to questions should they accept. I don’t really get why the CAS has this thing that all exams should be released at once.
Normally, the graders would grade the tests and then meet up in an undisclosed location and reconcile the grades for a few days. After that the CAS would run statistics and reports to determine the overall pass mark per exam. Once that was decided the results would be released.
They have posted that they started grading shortly after December 9th, they also posted that they were thankful for all the graders for grading during the holidays….
