<p>Is it possible that you miss 7 out of 52 questions in the BS section of a Kaplan practice test, you are still given 15? This is the third Kaplan practice test. I just could not believe it.</p>
<p>Thanks in advance for any input.</p>
<p>It’s Kaplan’s grading scale. They can grade it however they like.</p>
<p>Is your son in the Kaplan course? The tests are made so that they only cover the material that has been covered at that point of the course. I don’t know how that affects the grading.</p>
<p>^ Yes, he is. But I think his “study plan” (if there is any :)) might not follow the course sequence closely though. Maybe because of this, he could get a quite high score at one time (if it happens that he has studied the covered material.) and get a quite low score another time (if he has not.).</p>
<p>He told me at one time that his Kaplan instructor even told him (informally out of the class room) that he really does not have to take all the practice tests if he does not feel like it. Boy…I could not make any sense out of this. I think he tries to complete these practice tests just because he thinks he may want to take the AAMC tests via Kaplan in the future.</p>
<p>He did not have any faith in the high score the Kaplan practice test software gave him today. So he asked me (as if I would know better than him about this!) what the score should be if he misses 7 questions out of 52 questions. If I remember correctly, BDM once posted (maybe quite a long time ago) that, for either the PS or BS section, one point corresponds to about 2 to 3 missed questions until the score is dropped to like 10 or 11.</p>
<p>Shades and twinmom, thanks for your input.</p>
<p>twinmom, I am still somewhat confused by what you just wrote:
I just asked DS again to clarify what kind of online test he took today. He told me that this is a full-length online practice test. It potentially covers everything, not just the material that has been covered at that point of the course as you said. It seems that there are only 5 full-length practice tests, and each of these 5 tests includes a writing section as well.</p>
<p>He said there is another kind of test which covers the material that has been covered at a certain point of the course. For example, after the topic of magnetism is just covered, there is an online test for this particular topic. Usually, there are only about 25 questions for this kind of shorter test, not 52 questions as I said. (that is, 52 for BS, 52 for PS, 40 for VR, as well as a writing section.)</p>
<p>Is this the kind of test that you referred to? Thanks!</p>
<p>Kaplan’s tests are very difficult, and they overcompensate with ridiculously inflated grading scales. I think it starts to break down as a predictor at the extremes. I was averaging 38-41 on my Kaplan practice tests. If only I’d gotten that score on the real thing :D</p>
<p>It is my opinion that most people score within 2 points of the average score of their last three Kaplan exams. Not always true, I just had a student who was averaging 34s who got a 38 a couple days ago. Very proud of him. I personally was one point off from my average Kaplan score.</p>
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<p>Just to be sure, are there only five Kaplan exams? And what you just said is that the last three exams tend to have more “predictive power” for the score on the real thing?</p>
<p>What makes me puzzled is that the few scores DS have had appear to be generated by a random number generator. The range is from 29 to 42, and the standard deviation is also huge as there is no number that is near the middle of this range. Both he and I do not believe that he can ever get a score near the high end of this range. We even think there may be a bug on the Kaplan test software. He thinks the very best he may get on the real thing is likely close to 35.</p>
<p>I believe there are something like 12 Kaplan exams. What I meant by last three is that the last three that he or she does, not necessarily the last three of all of the exams. I say this just because if you were to take the average of all of the Kaplan exams, you probably would get a substantially lower average than the average of the three exams that were nearest to the end of your studying.</p>
<p>Wow, I did not know there are so many Kaplan exams! Somehow my impression is that we have only 5. My impression is incorrect then.</p>
<p>I did some googling. Somebody (SN2ed) recently posted the followimg translation chart on another popular premed site: (I do not know where he gets this chart.)</p>
<p>"This is the scale from AAMC CBT #10, it should serve as a good reference point.</p>
<p>PS VR BS
15 52-52 40-40 51-52
14 50-51 39-39 50-50
13 49-49 38-38 47-49
12 46-48 37-37 46-46
11 44-45 34-36 43-45
10 41-43 31-33 39-42
9 38-40 29-30 35-38
8 33-37 27-28 32-34
7 28-32 24-26 29-31
6 23-27 21-23 26-28
5 19-22 19-20 23-25
4 15-18 15-18 20-22
3 11-14 12-14 16-19
2 8-10 9-11 14-15
1 0-7 0-8 0-13"</p>
<p>If I believe what is shown on this chart, DS should get a score of 11 on BS since he missed 7 questions (52-7=45, which is translated to 11 according to the last column on this chart.)</p>
<p>He said he missed 4 on 40 VR questions, so he should get an 11 on VR also.</p>
<p>This seems about right. (His goal is to get 11 on all three sections, and gets One “bonus” point higher if he gets lucky.)</p>
<p>I do not know how many he missed on PS. He said he missed a lot there so he did not want to count how many he missed as it would be too depressing. I guess he may still have a lot of work to do in order to improve his PS score. (esp. on general chemistry.)</p>
<p>Hmmm…it seems to me that the rule of the thumb is that, between 15 to 11, for VR, the score is decreased by one point for missing one question. But for BS (maybe for PS also?), the score is decreased by one point for missing 2 questions.</p>
<p>mmmcdowe: Thanks again.</p>
<p>VR is definitely the most heavily curved, though each actual MCAT has its own scale. Basically, you need to be shooting for 85% or higher on VR if you want a double digit score.</p>
<p>Yeah, Kaplan’s scale is generous because they make their tests much harder. I guess it’s supposed to balance out, but the AAMC tests are much better for practice.</p>
<p>So no, he wouldn’t be able to miss 7 and get a 15 on the real exam. However, he would likely miss less than 7 because Kaplan’s is harder.</p>
<p>Agreed that Kaplan compensates for harder than actual MCAT exams. However, I personally think that the AAMC exams are a tad easier, and I would rather work too hard than not enough.</p>
<p>Check this thread out.</p>
<p>[30+</a> MCAT Study Habits- The CBT Version | MCAT Discussions | Student Doctor Network](<a href=“30+ MCAT Study Habits- The CBT Version | Student Doctor Network”>30+ MCAT Study Habits- The CBT Version | Student Doctor Network)</p>
<p>Mcat2: Sorry, I think I messed up with info. I believe that the first tests only cover the content that has been covered. The full length tests cover everything. My apologies.</p>
<p>twinmom: Thanks for clarifying this out.</p>
<p>mmmcdowe
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<p>This is just not true and your comment illustrates how careful people need to be while trying to relate to others anecdotal experiences. Kaplan Full Lengths tests 4, 10 and 11 are notoriously difficult, with most (everyone?) dropping significantly from their average scores. If anything, these three tests are NOT AT ALL representative of what a student averages during practice tests or gets in the real exam.</p>
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<p>DS happened to take Kaplan Full Lengths test 4 the other day. He thought that he would likely not do as well as the other tests during the test. But Kaplan scoring system still gave him about the same score as his other test scores, likely due to a very very lenient curve for test 4.</p>
<p>Because the curve is too lenient, he just has very little confidence in Kaplan’s scoring system. He therefore arbitrarily adopts a scoring system that he once learned from somewhere:</p>
<p>For PS or BS, if you miss every 2 to 3 questions, your scaled score will drop by one point until your score drops to 11.</p>
<p>For VR, if you miss every one question, your scaled score will drop one point, until your score drops to 11.</p>
<p>I just look up Kaplan’s score conversion table for the full length practice test 4. I am surprised by how lenient it is. For example, the PS section conversion table tells me that: (I am particularly surprised by: range 38 - 47 is converted to 14.)</p>
<p>Kaplan Practice Test 4:</p>
<p>PS:
range 48 - 52 –> scaled score 15
range 38 - 47 –> scaled score 14
range 35 - 37 –> scaled score 13
range 32 - 34 –> scaled score 12
range 30 - 31 –> scaled score 11
range 27 - 29 –> scaled score 10
range 24 - 26 –> scaled score 9
…</p>
<p>^^^ I have talked to many, many students while doing Kaplan and I have never met anyone who did not drop the score for 4, 10 or 11 in comparison to the other tests. Yours is the first I hear. Mind you, the drop people encountered is significant - ( 8 points and more from their averages). This is so well known, that most Kaplan students are skipping 10 and 11 all together, especially if they are close to their exam date because they consider them “confidence crushers”.</p>
<p>Kaplan’s curve is more lenient because their material is more specific and by all means somewhat more complex than the real test. By having a more lenient curve, Kaplan attempts to bring the scores closer to reality.</p>
<p>AAMC, on the other hand has a completely different curve, where 3-4 wrong may be a 12, especially on the sciences. The material is also easier.</p>
<p>I would choose Kaplan over AAMC if I was forced to choose only one. Doing both of them, is certainly the way to go, imo.</p>
<p>MyOpinion: Thanks for your input. I would suggest DS to skip 10 and 11 then. (It is likely he will not go that far any way. He once said he would likely stop at 5 and then move onto AAMC.)</p>
<p>For his 6 FL tests taken so far (1 diagnostic and the first 5 practice tests), he started from a 29, followed by a small jump, a very big jump, and thereafter, mostly stayed there. I also suspect that the fact that he took the last 4 tests remotely from home may influence his scores positively. Even though the test is still timed, the atmosphere is much more relax than being physically at the Kaplan center. I wonder whether most students take all these practice tests at the Kaplan center.</p>