This has always puzzled me and I've always wanted to ask a psychometrician about this.
If the CAS psychometrician could answer this even better!
Seeing that the pass ratios decrease from the pre-lims to the uppers piqued my interest. Those however can be understandable. It's a different governing body coming up with those exams. Those exams also seem to get progressively longer/cover more material. So you can't really make a direct comparison between P and C. Having the same pass ratios can be explained.
Now the CAS upper exams have always been the ones that confused me the most. The upper exams are consistent and CAS oversees all of them. Exam 6US and 9 probably have the most material. I wouldn't say that the material on any of them is significantly harder to grasp than any of the other ones.
So we all know that only a certain % of people that start the exam process make it all the way through. The people that complete the pre-lims are better at passing exams then the initial set of people. The subset that make it to ACAS are better at passing the exams than the previous subset. The people taking FCAS exams are better at passing exams than the subset that only could pass 1 upper or stopped at ACAS. So the subset gets smaller as you move up.
So why don't the pass ratios go up? In everything else you see, when the subset gets smaller, the remaining group is generally better at passing tests than the original subset. Grad students gpa's vs undergrad. Grad students testing scores on the SAT/ACT/GRE vs undergrad. Sports is similar.
I did a quick chart to illustrate it. It's the weighted effective average pass ratios per exam. The CAS uppers are for the last 10 years. The pre-lims are only for 2011-present.
If the CAS psychometrician could answer this even better!
Seeing that the pass ratios decrease from the pre-lims to the uppers piqued my interest. Those however can be understandable. It's a different governing body coming up with those exams. Those exams also seem to get progressively longer/cover more material. So you can't really make a direct comparison between P and C. Having the same pass ratios can be explained.
Now the CAS upper exams have always been the ones that confused me the most. The upper exams are consistent and CAS oversees all of them. Exam 6US and 9 probably have the most material. I wouldn't say that the material on any of them is significantly harder to grasp than any of the other ones.
So we all know that only a certain % of people that start the exam process make it all the way through. The people that complete the pre-lims are better at passing exams then the initial set of people. The subset that make it to ACAS are better at passing the exams than the previous subset. The people taking FCAS exams are better at passing exams than the subset that only could pass 1 upper or stopped at ACAS. So the subset gets smaller as you move up.
So why don't the pass ratios go up? In everything else you see, when the subset gets smaller, the remaining group is generally better at passing tests than the original subset. Grad students gpa's vs undergrad. Grad students testing scores on the SAT/ACT/GRE vs undergrad. Sports is similar.
I did a quick chart to illustrate it. It's the weighted effective average pass ratios per exam. The CAS uppers are for the last 10 years. The pre-lims are only for 2011-present.
Why do pass ratios go down/stay the same?