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BPAL Madness!
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Finally, an exam update...

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antimony

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So I took the exam about 3 weeks ago...

 

It took me this long to recover enough to be willing to blog about it!

 

Anyway, The test was 4 hours and 35 questions. All calculation/numerical questions, but multiple choice, so no opportunity for partial credit if you make arithmetic mistakes.

 

Although it's against the rules, a lot of people take their MC letter answers out of the test. The evening of the test (after the sittings are done in all time zones) one person will usually volunteer to run the PAK (popular answer key), and everybody sends them their answers. They then create a key based on the idea that usually wrong answers are fairly evenly distributed between the different wrong answer choices (with the exception of tricky questions that trick people into one specific wrong answer) so that the right answers are usually the plurality of answers for each question. The PAK is usually right to within a question or 2.

 

According to the PAK, I got 24/35. The pass mark is usually 21-22. (The pass mark is set each sitting after the tests are all scored. Although the societies say that the exams are not "curved", it's pretty clear that the pass mark is usually set to keep the passing percentage pretty steady)

 

I'm not going to tempt fate by claiming I passed, but the odds are pretty decent I may have pulled it off. I won't know officially until July 14. :thud:

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Well, I know you don't want to celebrate just yet, but that sounds very promising. You did a beautiful job, anyway. Be proud of yourself!

 

In the meantime, fingers crossed.

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Leave it to the actuaries to come up with a way to self-assess after an exam. :lol: I'm cautiously hopeful for ya. Aw heck, who am I kidding, you got this!

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