The AICPA said themselves that they do not curve the exams. In a way, I believe them. They actually weight it, which is a tad bit different than curving. Curving is basically throwing in an extra 10-20 points to your score. Weighting is when you get more points for getting the harder questions right. I guess Scruff is right in a way that it's the individual questions that are curved, not the entire exam. When I think of curve, I'm thinking + 10 points or something like that.
But I still stand by what I said earlier that it's only difficult testlets that are curved. Medium testlets are not curved. So if you get all medium testlets, it is going to be near impossible to pass. I think those people who failed just by a few points (i.e 72-74) get harder testlets, but they missed by 1 or 2 questions. Every time I get all medium testlets, I almost always score in the 60s or below. When I failed FAR with a 73, that was the only time I failed and felt like the testlets got harder.
When I took FAR and got that 89, that had to have been a HUGE curve because I was lost in the second testlet and was a bit puzzled in the third testlet as well. I knew I did well in Testlet 1, but I know I made A LOT of errors in the next two testlets. Though I was a bit more confident in my answers this time as opposed to the time I got that 73. So, a slightly better performance boosted that 73 to an 89. But in the past when I didn't get hard testlets due to my poor performance on the medium testlets, I would get in the 50s and 60s. The curve on those was very little to nothing. Same can be said about my REG exam.
Trust me, I've taken this exam and failed many times and passed. When I failed, my scores look like they were trying to crush me when they were grading them. But when I passed, it seemed as though they curved the heck out of it and that's how I scored in the high 80s.
I have a slight hunch that difficult questions are worth 2X or 3X more than the medium questions. Since medium testlets are not curved, you need to do well on that or else you will not get a hard testlet. If you don't do well, you will not get a hard testlet and will not be able to accumulate enough points. So, when you start your exam, you need to perform well. Now, if everyone were to automatically get hard testlets without having to do well on a medium testlet, THEN I would be jump up and say the exam is curved. But since you need to have a good performance in the medium testlet, that means you really need to know your stuff and do well in order to get rewarded with harder testlets that are worth more points.
Anyways, sorry for rambling on. But I've taken these exams so many times and failed many times, probably more than 90% of the members here, lol. So, I have a sense on how competitive or lenient they grade these.
.