<p>Can someone please tell me where the semifinals are released? I haven’t seen them on the site.</p>
<p>Haven’t seen the semis either on TRC. Could someone please post them?</p>
<p>Also, anyone taken Semis yet? What did you think? </p>
<p>Thanks in advance!!! Good luck!</p>
<p>Re: aleurone - As far as I saw, the semifinal exams were under the TRC in “Past Exams”. I may be mistaken, however. They aren’t accessible to students. </p>
<p>For semifinal scoring, it’s the raw sum of (Part 1 score) + 2(Part 2 score) + (Part 3 score) that must exceed the cutoff in order to final, correct?</p>
<p>@BeanDelphiki: yup</p>
<p>I had a couple of questions from the 2012 Semis that I wasn’t able to answer - I assume I’m allowed to post them now that the semis are public. If not, someone please let me know and I’ll take them down. </p>
<p>“51. In foxes, there are 9 coat colors: red, standard silver, Alaskan silver, double-black, smoky red, cross-red, blended-cross, substandard silver, and sub-Alaskan silver. A red fox was crossed with a double-black fox and their offspring were then crossed with each other. The F2 phenotypes were; 10 red : 18 smoky red : 20 cross-red : 39 blended-cross : 9 standard silver : 19 substandard silver : 12 Alaskan silver : 22 sub-Alaskan silver : 8 double-black. How many genes are involved in this cross?”</p>
<p>I feel like I should know how to do this, but I can’t seem to get it.</p>
<p>@BeanDelphiki - Where did you find the score calculation? I did not know that it is 2 x Part B.</p>
<p>The 2012 thread stated that the score was twice Part B. However, it seems to have varied from to year to year (looking at the recently posted semifinal exams).</p>
<p>It’s not necessarily 2x part B, part B has questions of he various point assignments. some might be worth 1 point. others might be worth 5 or 6 points. it depends on the question.</p>
<p>@ darksigma</p>
<p>No, this year the exam explicitly states that all of the Part B questions ar eworth two points each.</p>
<p>what is the maximum point one can get on the semifinal test??</p>
<p>Does anyone know what the highest finalist score was on last year’s semifinal test?</p>
<p>@emblem: Gotcha, though that wasn’t the case on the 2010 semi I took, so I think it depends on the year…</p>
<p>I don’t think that this is against the rules so I’ll just go out and explain the point totals for this year.</p>
<p>Part has 60 multiple choice questions, 55 of which of worth 1 points and 5 of which of worth 2 points, for a total of 65 points.</p>
<p>Part B has 60 multiples choices questions, all of which are worth 2 points, for a total of 120 points</p>
<p>Part C has free response questions totaling 37 points.</p>
<p>All together there are 222 points on the exam. Also, the exam explicitly tells whether or not there are multiple answers, which is a nice improvement over last year’s disorganized and murky exam.</p>
<p>I am glad they made the points more clear this year. Last year I think my kid lost quite a few points in part B, not realizing it was okay to select more than one correct answer.</p>
<p>Is it OK to discuss what people thought about the difficulty of this year’s semifinal?</p>
<p>@eli1729: okay to discuss difficulty, but no SUBJECTS or ANSWERS. it can get you dq’d</p>
<p>Around how many people usually make nationals if they take the top twenty scores?</p>
<p>@jalebigirl
This year 640 people made semifinals, then 20 make the national finals.</p>
<p>In my opinion, the semifinal exam was more clear and definitely easier than last year’s exam. Also, there about 70-80 more people taking the semifinal exam this year than last year so expect the cutoff to be quite a lot higher than last year’s 56%. I would guess that the cutoff will be in the range 70-80%.</p>
<p>No, rupnok couldn’t. There are two separate sets of passwords. There is the password for the TRC and then there are separate passwords sent to the teachers at the beginning of each testing period so that they can unlock the exam found in the TRC. From what my teacher told me, the open exam password was emailed and the semifinal exam password was physically mailed in a letter.</p>