October curve is harsh <- Truth or Myth?

Test Preparation SAT Preparation
1

<p>I heard all these talks about "october curve is very harsh"</p>

<p>How does CB decide curve?</p>

<p>Anybody know?</p>

<p>Thank you for your answer!!</p>

2

<p>Well, I thought most curves were decided by the number of people getting a particular problem correct...</p>

<p>But, I have no idea! Talk about fearing the worst.</p>

<p>I'd wager that the October curve is harsh because some people taking it have studied over the summer.</p>

3

<p>it is true m8ie...</p>

4

<p>curves are calculated before the test is administered</p>

5

<p>coolio24567// that's what I was thinking.. but my friends wouldn't believe me lol..</p>

6

<p>How would we know these things, anyway? Have we got a snitch on the inside? ;)</p>

7

<p>Well, I swear we've got leaks somewhere in the pipe system, what with the overload of info here.</p>

<p>And if curves are calculated beforehand...</p>

<p>CRAP.</p>

8

<p>just do your best. that's all you have to do.</p>

9

<p>I found this by searching in this forum:</p>

<p>Bigis posted on 9-07-06:</p>

<p>There is no "curve" on the SAT's thought people love to talk about the curve as being "hard" or "easy"</p>

<p>So what are people talking about?</p>

<pre><code>1. Those who say the tests are "curved before" being given are misinterpreting the process of assembling the test. All the test items are pretested and are given a difficulty rating based on their performance in pretesting. Every test form is assembled to have the same average difficulty as every other test form.

  1. Those who say the tests are "curved after" being given are misinterpreting the process of equating and scaling. After the administration of a test form, the average raw score may be higher or lower that other administrations. This is probably due to one of two reasons:
- The test form is harder or easier than other forms, despite the pretesting.
- The testing population is stronger or weaker than previous testing populations.

Equating is the process of determining the relative strength of the current test-taking population. Based on the equating results, a scale of scores is generated and the raw scores are assigned scaled scores of 200 to 800.
</code></pre>

<p>The goal is to make the scores equally difficult to achieve, no matter how "easy" or "hard" an individual form may be. A 780 should be equally difficult (or easy for a CCer) to achieve in October, January or May.</p>

<p>Of course, the first response to this will probably be someone who now thinks the test is "curved" twice</p>