[mccpa]

I am taking AUD on 11/27 and got nervous by reading people’s threads regarding their experience on taking AUD in Q4. It seems most of the peeps felt Okay on MCQ but the SIMs are extremely hard. I am wondering if it has something to do with the curve?

I was checking on AICPA AUD passing rate. This year’s cumulative as of Q3 is 48.89%, which is higher than previous year’s cumulative passing rate which is around 45%~47%. Does it mean in this 4th quarter, they are going to bring the rate down???

Although, I vaguely remember on one of the AICPA podcast, they said the test is not curved. but who are we kidding……

[Bourne]

yes. you can expect a 95% chance of the pass rates being lower this quarter.

[Bourne]

The test is not necessarily “curved” but they do weight questions to keep the pass rates down. I do not know this for 100%, but I'm about 98% sure.

You get score results saying you scored comparable, weaker, or stronger. Why would you get results comparing you to the rest of the people taking the exam in that quarter if you weren't competing with everyone in that quarter for a pass? I believe if you do comparable to everyone in that quarter, then you pass. Based on that, they weight questions more than others in order to keep the pass rates down and forcing you to get a higher score to be “comparable” or “stronger”.

This logic may not be true, but I believe they take it into their own hands to determine pass rates, as opposed to just giving questions and telling the candidates the score they got say a month after you sit for the exam. Not 9 days after the last testing day.

[RB]

There is no “curve” in the sense of hey we'll average out the rates for this period

BUT the AICPA does explain their grading metrics up to a point. And basically, each question is weighted based on difficulty, harder questions being worth more.

You score is absolutely not a % right or wrong, maybe some super easy questions only give you 0.3 of a normal point and maybe a hard one would give you 2 if you actually got it. And within that, there is definitely some curve, because Q2+3 pass rates are up, at least for BEC, after the changes that everyone is complaining about. I would assume the actual score is not a sum of those, but maybe a 75 requires only 110 of “200” possible points in their algorithm and a 98 requires 195 of the 200 possible, something like that.
All I can say is somehow, it's not just a percentage of right / wrong.

[Anonymous]

@mccpa – don't stress about the curves and the way they weight questions. It gives you no advantage to passing. Spend your time focusing on the material. You need to answer some of the “hard” questions correctly no matter how you shake the curve. Review the AICPA released questions to get an idea of what they consider “hard.”

[Author]

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