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exams compared to practice tests?

Posted: Fri Dec 19, 2008 12:46 am
by stardust
There seem to be lots of bad scores than in previous testing times (or maybe just more
people willing to admit it) when I followed this forum throughout. I was wondering if it
was just a harder test this time around. How did people feel the recent test compared to
the 4 practices tests?

Re: exams compared to practice tests?

Posted: Fri Dec 19, 2008 1:19 am
by cato88
I think it might of been because there were less calculation intensive questions and more questions either you know this definition/result questions ie it was slanting more into making physics seem like history/biology.

Re: exams compared to practice tests?

Posted: Fri Dec 19, 2008 2:17 am
by sterculus
I thought that Nov 08 was roughly equivalent to difficulty to the 0177 exam, and my scaled score (74=910) actually matches 0177 exactly. So take from that what you will.

Re: exams compared to practice tests?

Posted: Fri Dec 19, 2008 3:52 am
by techodestructo
The oct 2008 exam was definitely on par with the easier practice exams (ie not the 1996 one). know the bohr model and some relativistic kinematics and you're good to go!

Re: exams compared to practice tests?

Posted: Fri Dec 19, 2008 4:28 am
by xudis149
sterculus wrote:I thought that Nov 08 was roughly equivalent to difficulty to the 0177 exam, and my scaled score (74=910) actually matches 0177 exactly. So take from that what you will.
has the scores from ETS reached you already?

Re: exams compared to practice tests?

Posted: Fri Dec 19, 2008 10:06 am
by pqortic
sterculus wrote:I thought that Nov 08 was roughly equivalent to difficulty to the 0177 exam, and my scaled score (74=910) actually matches 0177 exactly. So take from that what you will.
You mean your score was 74% rank and 910 rescaled???? are you sure about it?

Re: exams compared to practice tests?

Posted: Fri Dec 19, 2008 3:39 pm
by sterculus
74 raw score. It was 88%. I ordered score reports for schools, and the confirmation for that from ETS has already arrived (with my scores listed on it).

Re: exams compared to practice tests?

Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2009 3:23 pm
by mhazelm
I thought Nov. was a lot like the 0177 test. I think that's what we need to study most - 0177... seems most like the real thing.

Too bad, because I scored lowest on that one, but I got 800-something on one of the others! In fact, I found all three to be easier except for the first time I attempted 9677 (it was my first practice and a bit of a shock!).

Also, my friend who kept scoring lower than me on practice tests scored 70 points higher on the Oct test than I got on the Nov test, but it's just a thought. Maybe she just had a good day and I had a bad one...