April CT4 exams easier than September ones?

does anyone know, by some chance, know what the pass rates have been for CT4 for each sitting dating back to 2005? I have this theory about April CT4 being easier than September 2004 and the pass rate thus being higher in April! Could anyone verify this?

 

That's actually been the case for all years since 2005 except 2009.

2005: 41.8 / 35.5
2006: 50.0 / 41.4
2007: 33.0 / 26.8
2008: 63.1 / 39.5
2009: 36.0 / 51.7
2010: 56.1 / 44.8

 

Thought so! Thanks for that info.. and I suspect that it will be the same this year as well as this year's April exam was quite straightforward..

 

Where did you get those pass rate % from?

 

The profession's old website had pdfs of past years' pass lists. I used those to create a spreadsheet of pass rates for all subjects (since '05), which I update after each session.

 

Hi Zhin, would it be possible for you to post those pass rates somewhere on the forums?

 

Here you go.

 

Thank you. It is interesting to see that CT4 has the lowest average pass rate out of all Cts.

 

For me i think the most interesting statistic by far is the variance of CT4,6 and 8

 

yes, that's true...I am not sure I really understand why the pass rates vary so much from exam to exam....

 

Extort more money

 

I think there may have a static pass mark and exams will naturally vary in terms of difficulty from one session to another.

 

you're such a cynic
That maybe explains the relatively low pass rates, but I'm not sure if explains the volatility in pass rates.

I guess you either have to believe that the standard of the students taking the papers varies wildy from sitting to sitting, or that the level at which the bar is set varies wildly from sitting to sitting. I tend to believe the latter is the greater factor anyway.

I don't think that's the case - I think they choose a different pass mark for each paper which the feel reflects the minimum level of ability that deserves a pass.

 

This has also puzzled me - as I assumed that generally the overall standard of students taking exams wouldn't vary greatly between sittings and since the pass mark is apparently varied to reflect the minimum 'acceptable / passable' standard, I wouldn't have expected the pass rate to change by very much.

 

Also - thanks Zhin

 

One of the former examiners said that each exam has it's own pass mark in some article a while ago, but i think it is difficult to believe that it varies significantly based on observation of past pass rates relative to the exam difficulty. Maybe they vary the pass mark within some narrow band. Eg 55% for hard exams through to 65% for relatively easy exams.

 

I also read somewhere that the profession adjusts the pass mark based on the difficulty of the particular exam, so that to ensure fairness between exam sessionts. But this also would imply that the pass rate should be more or less the same... e.g. high pass mark for easy papers and low pass mark for difficult papers

 

Also what is quite funny and worrying to me is that after an extremely low pass rate for a CT e.g. 29.3%, in the next session we observe a high pass rate e.g. over 69.1%...for CT8, and we can see the same pattern for CT4 for Sept 07 vs. Apr 08....

 

I think it is partly for the following reasons:
1) the exam cycles leave more time to study for the april exams (Between April and September there are 4 months not including the 2 months, and between September and April there are 6 monthsnot including the 2 months)
2) there are more public holidays leading up/around the april session so we can chain the public holidays to study leave days
3) People are well rested after a good December holiday and so study more efficiently

 

pass marks

the examiners are considering publishing the pass mark along with the results for each paper. apparently they are reluctant to do this but recognise that the vast majority of students want to know! (I know this becuase a senior examiner sat in on one of my tutorials earlier this year and asked the class what we we thought).

 

I can see why they'd rather not want people to know what the passmark is because the current setup forces us to learn the whole syllabus and not leave anything to chance whereas say if you knew that pass rate for CT6 is 55%, you could focus on everything else bar timeseries knowing there is no way timeseries will make 45 marks of an exam

right now, no sane person is willing to risk not knowing something in the syllabus because you just don't know the passmark and what everyone else sitting knows