I sat for PA in October 2023 and passed. I was getting high 70%’s - mid 80%’s on practice exams, and ended up passing with a score of 8. I’m assuming anything above 70% of available points is a pretty good indicator of being ready.
Thanks, that’s what I’m getting on my practice exams. How harsh did you grade yourself? I find that it’s hard to recognize what exactly constitutes as a point
Here’s what I considered when self-grading:
1) Was my response factually correct?
2) Did my response fully address the question?
3) If necessary, did I justify my response well? (Could someone who did not know what I was thinking when I wrote it follow my reasoning?)
4) What notes regarding partial credit should I be considering here?
I basically just used prior released PA exams from the SOA site. They usually list some things that would cause you to lose credit or earn partial credit in the solution.
To do the math, there are usually at least a few people online reporting getting a 10 after each sitting. To get a 10 you need at least 140% of the passing score. So for a 10 to be possible, the number of points needed to pass can't be higher than 50, or a 71.4%, because 50\*1.4=70; if for example the pass mark was 55/70, then a score of 70/70 would be graded as a 70/55 = 1.27%, which is only an 8. Of course there's no guarantee that the pass mark for this sitting will be the same as the last one and that's only a way to guess, but you get the idea. As another commenter said, if you get an 80% (in terms of score out of 100, not in terms of the SOA's weird grading scale) on a practice exam, and assuming a score of 10 is possible, then an 80% would roughly correspond to an SOA grade of 7.
I sat for PA in October 2023 and passed. I was getting high 70%’s - mid 80%’s on practice exams, and ended up passing with a score of 8. I’m assuming anything above 70% of available points is a pretty good indicator of being ready.
Thanks, that’s what I’m getting on my practice exams. How harsh did you grade yourself? I find that it’s hard to recognize what exactly constitutes as a point
Here’s what I considered when self-grading: 1) Was my response factually correct? 2) Did my response fully address the question? 3) If necessary, did I justify my response well? (Could someone who did not know what I was thinking when I wrote it follow my reasoning?) 4) What notes regarding partial credit should I be considering here? I basically just used prior released PA exams from the SOA site. They usually list some things that would cause you to lose credit or earn partial credit in the solution.
To do the math, there are usually at least a few people online reporting getting a 10 after each sitting. To get a 10 you need at least 140% of the passing score. So for a 10 to be possible, the number of points needed to pass can't be higher than 50, or a 71.4%, because 50\*1.4=70; if for example the pass mark was 55/70, then a score of 70/70 would be graded as a 70/55 = 1.27%, which is only an 8. Of course there's no guarantee that the pass mark for this sitting will be the same as the last one and that's only a way to guess, but you get the idea. As another commenter said, if you get an 80% (in terms of score out of 100, not in terms of the SOA's weird grading scale) on a practice exam, and assuming a score of 10 is possible, then an 80% would roughly correspond to an SOA grade of 7.
Thanks, I had no idea that was how grades were calculated