United States
Hong KongWhy your practice score is misleading
Practice scores mislead when the books were untabbed or absent, when there was no clock, when questions were repeated, or when the set was weighted evenly across categories rather than to the published counts.
On an open-book exam a practice score can be wrong in both directions, which is unusual and worth understanding.
One: no books, or untabbed books
Practicing closed book understates you, because you cannot look anything up. Practicing with untabbed books understates your speed and overstates your time.
Neither tells you what the real sitting will be like with a properly tabbed set.
Two: no clock
Untimed practice is a different exercise entirely. The whole difficulty here is retrieval speed, and removing the clock removes the difficulty.
An untimed 95 percent can be a timed 65 percent, and the gap is invisible until you time it.
Three: repeated questions
The second time through a bank you remember the answers rather than finding them. Your score rises and your retrieval speed has not improved at all.
The real paper is 31 questions of Procurement and 3 of Electrical. A practice set with equal coverage of twelve categories tests you on a paper that does not exist, and a candidate strong on the trades scores well on it and badly on the real thing.
What actually predicts
A full 125-question timed run, with the actual tabbed books, on questions you have not seen, weighted to the published counts.
Above 90 twice, with no large category below 60 percent. Everything else is an estimate.
And record your first pass
The number of questions you answered without opening a book, and how long it took. That is the most diagnostic figure available and no score reports it for you. Time it. Both directions.
Common questions
Why is my practice score misleading?
Usually because the books were untabbed or absent, there was no clock, questions were repeated, or the set was weighted evenly across categories.
Does untimed practice help?
For learning yes, for measurement no. Retrieval speed is the difficulty and removing the clock removes it.
What score means I am ready?
Above 90 of 125 twice, on unseen questions with tabbed books, with no large category below 60 percent.
Why does even weighting mislead?
The real paper is 31 Procurement questions and 3 Electrical. Equal coverage tests a paper that does not exist.
What is the most diagnostic figure?
How many questions your first pass answered and how long it took.