Self-study
How does 7Sage calculate the PrepTest equivalent score?
I got -4 on PT138.S4, and my "preptest equivalent" score was a 164. Then I took PT104.S1, and I also got -4, but the "preptest equivalent" score is 169. This seems like a big jump for the same number of questions. Does this just indicate that PT104.S1 was a harder section than most?
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3 comments
Great question! The PrepTest Equivalent score estimates your most likely overall LSAT score based on how you performed on that specific section. It doesn't just count how many questions you got right or wrong—it also considers the difficulty of each individual question. Here's how it works:
It weighs question difficulty:
Getting hard questions right signals a higher score
Missing easy questions signals a lower score
So even though you got -4 on both sections, the questions you got right and wrong were different difficulty levels, which is why PT104.S1 shows 169 while PT138.S4 shows 164.
Why not a perfect 180 on perfect sections? You might notice that even a perfect score on a section returns something like 174 rather than 180. That's because many test-takers across a range of scores (172–180) would also ace those same questions. Since there are far more people scoring in the 170s than at 180, the model returns 174 as the most probable score.
So yes, your observation is correct - PT104.S1 had harder questions, which is why the same -4 resulted in a higher equivalent score!
Hope this clarifies things!
@Mary Is this explained somewhere? Would be great to have a "How did we come up with this score" tooltip or something with this explanation. Which was great btw, tyvm
i believe it accounts for question difficulty