Maybe other licensing exams work like this but I was unaware. DD just took her nursing licensing exam. There are 260 questions EXCEPT the exam which you take on a computer cuts off after 75 ( or at various later points) if it determines “ with 95 percent certainty that you will pass…OR that you will fail. And then after you’ve taken it there is a “ trick” to determine if you passed before official results are released which involves trying to sign up to retake the test. If you passed a” good pop up” appears saying you are not eligible because you already are signed up for an exam. If it lets you sign up you likely failed. Oy! Good news Is DD got the “ good pop up” within an hour after the test ( which cut off after 75 questions) and today got official notice that she passed. Whew! Glad that’s over for her.
Actually, that’s pretty much how sophisticated computer-based exams work. It’s been around for a long time – basically, the system is programmed to skip ahead to harder questions if the person taking the test is getting the easy ones correctly. If the person starts to miss the harder questions, then the system will go back to some easier ones.
That’s more efficient - the test can be administered faster and people taking the tests aren’t going to run into problems tied to fatigue. Nice to be finished with an exam in an hour or less rather than sitting in an exam room for 3 hours.
Mathematically there is probably an internal score value assigned to individual questions and after 75 questions, the system probably can determine pretty reliably what the outcome will be. When licensing exams are pass-fail, then there will be some sort of minimum score that need to be achieved – and probably the individuals who have successfully answered a lot of the harder questions will have reached that threshold --and most of the ones who haven’t been able to answer enough questions have probably reached a point where it is mathematically impossible to pass unless there was a radical change in their performance.
Or to put it another way – let’s say the person needs to achieve an overall score of 75% to pass. If they are running above that level for the first 75 questions – they probably would do the same for the remaining 185; same is true for the ones who are significantly below that level. So it is only the borderline or barely passing testees that would need to go beyond the cutoff until whatever point was reached that the outcome was apparent.
The whole re-registering thing is just one of those hacks that students discover which may or many not be as reliable as they think. We see the same thing on threads here on CC ahead of admissions results – students discovering they can or can’t log into a financial aid portal or their admissions portal and using that as a way to read the tea leaves. Problem is that sometimes there can be other glitches in the computer system — and sometimes those are bugs in the system that get addressed as time goes on.
Congrats to your daughter in any case! No arguing with good news!
I get the set up except for the “likely” part. So , it allows you to sign up for a retry even if you have passed, if it’s likely you did not? That makes no sense to me. It’s simple mathematics if you are going to pass or fail when you get a certain critical number of questions right or wrong. No sense continuing after you hit tgst threshold in terms of the purpose of the test. It cuts down on people collecting the questions too.
Our S was able to take a standardized test on the computer in a testing center that way for Johns Hopkins Talent Search. It made the above-grade level exam much faster than it would have been otherwise, which helped him by not being as tiring. He scored very well on it and liked it.
One of the drawbacks of those types of exams is you can’t really skip questions or go back to review and possibly change answers to ones you found tough. S was a fan as he is generally quick and just wants to speed through the exam.
For the Bar exam, we had to answer ALL the questions for the multiple choice exam—morning session and afternoon session. The Cal Bar was an entire week if you include all the essay questions as well!
@cptofthehouse No …the way it works is if you are likely to fail then the test ends. This means if you get off to a shaky start because of nerves you don’t have a chance to do better just because you calm down. Certainly familiar with test which adjusted the questions based on how you were doing. I was not aware of tests that ended early based on how you were doing. Once in a while it lets you sign up even if you passed ( because you tried the trick too early) but 99 percent of the time it won’t let you sign up unless you failed. According to what I read if it won’t let you sign up it always means you passed.
“The whole re-registering thing is just one of those hacks that students discover which may or many not be as reliable as they think.”
According to the UWorld site (a service you can buy to help study) over 100k students who have reported to them say that the hack is 100 percent accurate with regards to indicating passing. That is to say no false results showing you passed if you didn’t. Though in rare cases false negatives. . I too thought it might not be accurate but apparently it really is with respect to a positive result.
The tests I’ve seen end purely on a mathematical basis. If you miss too many, there is no chance you will pass, so that ends the test. If you do well enough that you meet the magic number neededto pass, then it’s over too. No reason to continue.
There are learning programs where you automatically have to redo a section if you miss more than x number of questions in a row, I’ve only known one test programmed that way
Yep @cptofthehouse That woukd make sense. But this isn’t that. It’s going by how one does at the beginining. Even if you could mathematically pass it will cut you off if your performance is poor.
Congratulations to your daughter!
Yeah, I am a nurse and took that test to get my license (and passed in 75 questions, which was one of the more stressful hours of my life).
As I understand it, it’s a computer-adaptive test, which adjusts the level of difficulty of the next question based on how you did on the previous questions. It will try to find the level where you are getting about 50% of the questions right, and if that’s above a certain level of difficulty, you pass. If it’s below that level, you fail. If you’re inconsistent and it’s not sure yet where your level of competency is, it will keep giving you questions up to 265 at which point it will stop. Otherwise it can stop as early as 75 questions or any time after that. Officially, “[t]he computer will stop giving items when it is 95% certain that your ability is clearly above or clearly below the passing standard.” https://www.ncsbn.org/5908.htm
So if you’re doing well, it will give you harder questions (since there’s no point asking easy questions that you’re almost certainly going to get right), and conversely, if you’re doing poorly, it will give easier questions. Of course that led to me second-guessing myself, because if I knew an answer I was worried it was because the test was giving me easy ones.
That’s different from just giving everyone the same 75 first questions and estimating your likelihood of passing based on that, which I agree would be weird.
Here’s more information about it: https://www.ncsbn.org/1216.htm
I’ve never taken that specific test, but when I took my driver’s permit test (so long ago!), you could skip the last quarter of the questions if you’d gotten the first three-quarters right, because at that point you were guaranteed to pass with a 75% or higher.
I’ve taken lots of adaptive tests, though, and I HATE them! The fact that it goes up and down kills me – I always wonder if I’m doing badly or if the easier question is just a fluke. Plus I don’t always trust the algorithms (obviously the nursing test is very sophisticated, but our school uses adaptive tests for placement and things like that, and I’m sure they’re not as well-designed). However, it does save time on the easier questions, which is nice. Not worth it though!
The test was like that even in 1996, when I took it. I was so engrossed in the test that I wasn’t noticing how many questions I had answered when it shut off early into the test. I was startled and left having no clue how I had done. We didn’t have any way to find out early if we passed, so I had to wait for official notification.
As far as the hack, I see posts all the time on my nursing forum stating that the student tried it and it turned out not to be accurate. I don’t know what the percentage is that it is correct, but it is certainly not 100%.
@Nrdsb4 According to the director of student nursing at my daughters school they have never had a false positive ( where you get the “ good pop up” ) after the “ Now that you’ve taken the NCLEX e mail indicating results have processed. Ever. There are as I said false negatives ( where it takes your money even though you passed). My review of Allnurses.com is the same. No reported false positives.
My point about the hack is that it’s probably a bug, not a feature. That is, it is the way the system seems to work currently, but not something that you could expect to be preserved in the event of a software upgrade or security patch to the registration system in the future. So yes – it works now – but when you were complaining in the OP about the “craziest testing situation” ---- this part probably isn’t hard baked in - or an intentional part of the testing situation. It’s just a glitch.
@calmom. The “ crazy” situation I was referring to wasn’t the hack but the test itself. I have never heard of a test ending because you were likely to fail even though mathematically you could still pass.