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<p>DAndrew: Thanks, my feelings, exactly. Which is why it makes sense to clearly define and validate what numerical standards (which are more unforgiving than evaluating subjective factors) the candidate is judged by. </p>
<p>If many blindly seek to achieve perfect scores, while some otherwise qualified students could get left out of the process because they are not “advised”, “trained”, “pushed”, or “required” to excel on this test, then the meaning of the test itself changes from judging if you are apt enough to a middling competition where the stakes are high, the competitors many, and the test questions only moderately challenging; making it really hard to stand out and really easy to remain unnoticed. As you pointed out: feels like no advantage, but distinct disadvantage.</p>
<p>(Really, I was stunned to read postings on this Forum that on some sections two or three questions could skew percentiles absurdly: think 73rd percentile vs 91st percentile. Absolute standards would never do that: on a moderately easy test a 49 vs 51 /60 is very similar, only a 22 vs 51 /60 is very different). Funny that.</p>