Hi cfano1,
I was in the same boat as you last year…got trashed in the AM (almost all <50) and got band 4. I was also shocked…I was pretty well prepared, so how could i not get 50% of the problems right in ANY section! I decided i must have had a bad day and studied again. I retook the 2011 test towards the end of my 2012 studying. I was hoping for a EUREAKA moment where i realized what i did wrong…I was extremely rough on my grading and still got about an 85%. There were huge sections of the test that I know for a FACT i had knew how to do in 2011 but still got low scores by their grading.
Fast forward to this test. I walked out of the test feeling i did a little better with another year of studying…no gotcha questions…i knew how to do everything. Of course there were a couple questions that could have gone either way (so i assumed i went the wrong way), but I still felt confident. The only thing that bothered me was since i didn’t know what i did “wrong” in 2011 did i do the same thing “wrong” in 2012?
Well this time…band 8. A little better in the morning..but still 5 sections <50. Whatever i did wrong in 2011, i did must have done “wrong” again in 2012. I’m starting to think this can’t be a knowledge thing….I’m not stupid…i promise
Maybe it’s something in the formatting that I personally don’t think is a big deal…but the graders obviously do. 50% of the people are passing…so it would have to be something that everyone else is doing automatically.
Example: if $1,213.45 is the answer did i answer one of the following and get it COMPLETELY WRONG
1,234.56 (no currency sign)
$1234.56 (no comma)
$1234.452 (diff precision)
Surely not right? But I’m pretty sure some of those sections that were <50 I knew how to do (just like in 2011)
When grading my own mock tests…I’m sure i would have counted each of those as correct. This would be easy to fix if i knew the grading was that picky…but telling me i got <50 doesn’t help me prepare much for the next year. It also hurts the ego just a bit
You might feel a little different if you knew your band 2 was actually a 80% (just a few points off for a dumb mistake instead of the entire problem) but the passing required an 86%.
I’m not sure what I’m going to do here…but since this test didn’t seem overly difficult to me and I felt really well prepared…I don’t see how another year will help. If i do it again…i may focus on the afternoon and make sure i get >70% in all sections. If the bands are tight…maybe that’s the place to make up ground.