How are DANTES/DSST... exams graded?

Even though my school only gives credit or no-credit for standardized tests, I'm curious to know what the letter grade equivalents and percentiles are for the standardized tests.

Even though it's nice to just have the credit period, I'm curious to know how well I really did. Excelsior's website has a chart but they only give letter grade equivalents to a handful of CLEPS. The rest are supposed to be in the publications but I couldn't find it.

I know they may even vary with time and by the school, but just to get the general idea is there any chart with the DSST's someone could link to or cut-n-paste? THANKS

 

Just to make an example

DSST Drug and Alcohol Abuse i got a 61
Here's to your Health: 64

I belive passing would be high 40's would this give me approx a C+ in them(theoretically)---- Are those #'s the raw number I got right? -or are there percentiles? I looked all over the net and found no threshold scores for DSST's that I can use as a sample.

 

My understanding is that DSST exams are scaled to a Mean of 50 and Standard Deviation of 10 (if you're in a business program look forward to this in Statistics ) You never get the raw score.

This means that approximately 68% of the scores will fall within 1 SD of the Mean (40-60), 95% fall within 2 SDs (30-70).

BTW, if you get above 60 this means that you beat not only 68% of the scores (the ones between 40-60) but also all of those under 40, which is 1/2 of the remainder (16).

So, if my calculations are correct, your 61 and 64 would put you above the 84th percentile. Good job!

BTW, Excelsior publishes the cut scores for A, B and C grades in their "Student Guide and Assessment Catalog" document.

For Here's To Your Health the "A" score is 54, while it is 53 for Drug and Alcohol Abuse.

Cheers,
Mark

P.S. if the SD thing was really confusing look at the picture of the bell curve in the middle of this document http://business.clayton.edu/arjomand/business/l3.html

 

Thanks, but are you sure your not talking about CLEP? For example- 50 is passing for all CLEPs. DANTES the score is different for each test and they are usually in the mid to high 40's. For 53 or 54 to be an A would seem too good to be true since C is passing and that would be a 48 or 49...

As for the Excelsior publication- I looked all over their website and couldn't find that document. I have a password but all I found was course descriptions and study guides for ECE exams. I did find CLEP thresholds for a few but not DSST/DANTES...

 

No, it's DANTES. See the link below (based upon a quick Google search):

http://www-afa.adm.ohio-state.edu/undergrad/admissions/cbe_dantes.asp

Besides, the DANTES cut scores that I posted for you came from the Excelsior document. To get it, after logging in click on the "Excelsior College Publications Request" at the bottom of their website and the 2nd document is what you're looking for. However, it may be that only active students have access to this guide as it's listed under "MyEC Materials", the section above "General Materials".

No DANTES score that I'm aware of needs more than a 60 for an "A" and most only need scaled scores in the mid-50's.

I think you must be confusing SCALED scores with RAW scores. When you say "too good to be true" you would have no idea what difference in raw score would give you a pass of 49 and an "A" for 53. Traditionally, you would get a 60 for a "C", 70 for a "B" and 80 for an "A", right? Forget what you know, this doesn't work.

In addition to what I stated previously about a mean of 50 with SD of 10 (which works for percentiles) is that they are basing this on how many raw questions the average student who just took a course would do. Also, by itself the raw scores won't translate between exams.

An example:

Exam #1
- the average "C" student got 50/100 questions right
- the average "B" student got 53/100 questions right
- the average "A" student got 59/100 questions right

Exam #2
- the average "C" student got 45/100 questions right
- the average "B" student got 52/100 questions right
- the average "A" student got 57/100 questions right

Until you scale the score you can't determine what a "C" cut score is as opposed to an "A" cut score, because some exams are harder than others.

By the way, CLEP is similar, but I don't know if they shoot for a mean of 50 with SD 10 - their C cut scores are all 50, but the "B" and "A" scores vary (some as high as 70 for an "A").

Please believe me, I and others here know what we are talking about - I've taken 35 exams in the past year and know very well what the scoring is for Excelsior and suspect others know what they need for their college...

Cheers,
Mark