.

noonawoon

.

Jerry

At the higher end, my scores had a variance that was quite large. ~10 points.

I actually think it's good to see variance, since it gives you a more realistic range of what you can expect to score. My scores resemble a stock market more than a straight line, but I think that's what you should expect to see once your sample becomes large enough.

My drops were unsettling at first, but then I realized that it's much better to see a drop at the PT stage, rather than have your outlier score appear during the actual test date.

noonawoon

Good point! Did you ever see a stabilizing of PT scores?

The drop I've seen is only 5 points but a pretty big percentile drop, but I am glad to see the drop early on so I know what to focus on

Jerry

Well, if you consider a range of +/– 5 to be stable, then I guess that's stabilized... But when I was scoring in the 160s, my scores were a lot more stable, as in predictable. I kind of thought that trend would continue as my score went up, but the minimums and maximums just grew larger.

If this were a graph, the kurtosis (the frequency of me hitting my average score) was significantly higher when I was scoring in the 160s than when I reached the 170s. So, based on my experience, I'd say, depending on where you are in your studies, you might experience a stabilization at first, which is then followed by a destabilization as your score increases.

But, honestly, as someone who studied statistics, I never really cared about my extremes. It's important to establish a range of what you can expect to score. However, I didn't use my highest score or lowest score as a gauge for my improvement/decline. Instead, I just focused on getting a large data sample, so that I could make an accurate prediction with a representative mean. My final score ended up falling within my expectations, which meant I reached my goal score.

If someone is always scoring the exact same on their PTs, that would seem to be a good thing, but I wouldn't be too surprised if their actual score ended up being a lot different than their PT score. A data set like that would be really non-normal.

ashali.pc

I took 2 PTs within 5 days of each other, there was a 5pt difference. I also took a PT about a week after the Nov exam and got 4pts lower than I ended up getting on the Nov exam. I think +/- 5pts is pretty normal.

zheng18552

I'd say the range is at most 10 points wide for certain people.

this translate into a modifier of +/- 5pts away from the median.

i am sure the modifier depends on which tier you are in.

Maybe 170+ takers are more stable in their performance than others, but some if not most of them don't wish to reveal their scores.

For instance, it could be some test takers consistently score 175+/-3 points.