[SuperCPA]

My Conspiracy:

While the CPA score release is upcoming, I wanted to get people’s opinion on scoring a 74. Do you think this is actually considering “close to passing”? I somehow feel that there is actually a large bridge between a 74 and 75. I kind of feel that it may be a gimmick by the AICPA to make people feel as if they were close to passing to encourage them to re-take the exam. Basically, I think that the difference between a 73 and 74 is different than the difference between 74 and 75.

Thoughts..?

[Anonymous]

My guess would be it's all the same. I'm not sure how they'd swing that legally.

[Anonymous]

Entertaining theory, my boring non-conspiracy theory though is that CPA scores are approximately a negatively skewed distribution with a mean of around 71. Outlying, low scores bring the mean lower than the median or mode. Therefore, perhaps 74 is one of the most common scores, but I don't think that a 73/74, 74/75 difference is specifically designed. Perhaps, you hear more about people who make a 74 and “failed by one point”, than those who get a 75 and “passed”. No data to support this theory, just my guess.

[jdub]

I've gotten a 74 twice and a 72 once. I try not to have too many thoughts about it because I just get angry – haha!

I did find it interesting that after my first exam (a pass) a director at my company (not my direct report) asked me if I could see my score if I failed (I guess he assumed it wasn't my very first exam). He interviewed someone who told him they got a 74 and he threw their resume out because when he took the CPA exam (back when 4 were taken at once) I guess they didn't tell you if you failed by that small margin so he thought the person was lying.

I can't decide if the times I have gotten the 74 if I like knowing I was that close, or I'd rather just not know at all!

[Defo]

Have they ever made mention that they purposely design the test to try and pass slightly below 50% of candidates for each section? I think the statistical passing rates posted could support that conspiracy theory. Or is that not even a theory and just an obvious intention of the test design?

[Anonymous]

We can't start talking about 74's 10 days before score release!!!

[Anthony]

Depends on how you describe “close”. To me and from my personal experience, 74 means you have some gaps in that you haven't covered.

[alloverit]

@jdub

Your boss must be a long-time CPA.

In the old days scores between a 69-74 were reported as a 69. That's why he thought the person was lying.

Of course, everything about the test was different back then. You HAD to pass TWO sections at once before you could take the remaining two individually, there was no BEC section at all, and of course…the test was on paper.

[TommyTheCat]

concur with Alloverit. 69 was the closest failing score you could get to a 75 back in the old days. My managing partner took the exam back then and he said it was a clever way for them to avoid having any push back or petitions for “close” scores. He said it also was a good motivational tool when you failed because it made you study harder on the re-take. You didnt think you just barely missed a pass and never slacked off on restudying for the 2nd take.

I see his points on both fronts. I have never ever heard of someone successfully petitioning for a score review on a 74 or 73 and actually having it changed to a 75. Just gives false hope if anything.

[Anonymous]

I don't think the scoring between a 73 and 74 then a 74 and 75 is any different, but I think they have a pretty clear idea as to what constitutes a 75 on these exams. As has been mentioned, it's almost impossible to challenge your score and get the score raised, so based on that I would think that a 74 isn't particularly “close” to a 75 in terms of the way they score the exams.

The mysterious way these exams are scaled has to be considered. If you look at average pass rate for the exam, for example FAR, it has an annual average pass rate of 46.61% since 2006. The lowest yearly pass rate in that time for FAR was 44.42% in 2017. The highest yearly pass rate in that time period was 49.21% in 2008. Based on this, it's a pretty fair assumption that the FAR annual pass rates will never be below 40%, but will also not likely ever be over 50% for an entire year (it was only 41.59% in Q1 of 2018, so it definitely wont be over 50% for 2018 either).

So I think this scoring scale and the difficulty in getting a score overturned from a failing score to a passing score must mean there is a pretty clear distinction between what exam performance is 74 and what performance is 75.

Although who knows, the whole exam process is designed to take our money so maybe it's possible that 1 extra MCQ is the difference, or maybe it's 10 MCQs and half a simulation correct difference and a 74 and a 75 really aren't close at all.

[Author]

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