Can anyone explain how Virginia scales the essays scores? The website says the average essay score will equal the average MBE score. Does this mean that they add whatever number of points is needed to get the average essay to the average MBE score, and then weigh the scores?
So say the average essay score is 65 and the average MBE is 140. Do they add 75 points to all the essay raw scores?
Virginia Bar Exam Scoring Forum
Forum rules
Anonymous Posting
Anonymous posting is only appropriate when you are sharing sensitive information about bar exam prep. You may anonymously respond on topic to these threads. Unacceptable uses include: harassing another user, joking around, testing the feature, or other things that are more appropriate in the lounge.
Failure to follow these rules will get you outed, warned, or banned."
Anonymous Posting
Anonymous posting is only appropriate when you are sharing sensitive information about bar exam prep. You may anonymously respond on topic to these threads. Unacceptable uses include: harassing another user, joking around, testing the feature, or other things that are more appropriate in the lounge.
Failure to follow these rules will get you outed, warned, or banned."
-
JoeSeperac
- Posts: 507
- Joined: Thu Feb 16, 2017 3:30 pm
Re: Virginia Bar Exam Scoring
It's my understanding that VA only gives you the Essay/Short Answer Scaled Score, the Multistate Scaled Score, and the Combined Weighted Total (CWT). This makes it impossible to determine raw/scaled conversions. As states go, Virginia is not very transparent in their grading process. Some bar examiners opt against transparency to deters lawsuits (both meritorious and frivolous). For example, an examinee in Virginia who suffered a software failure once tried to take his case to the Supreme Court of the United States but lost:
http://jonathanbolls.blogspot.com/
FYI, I created a calculator that follows NCBE’s standard psychometric practice for essay scaling.
https://seperac.com/zcalc-raw-scaled.php
If you play around with this calculator, you will find that the higher the MBE mean or the lower the standard deviation, the higher the scale. Please note that I believe all my calculators/calculations are reliable but there is no way of knowing for certain. The bar examiners are notorious for releasing very little about the exam, so people like me have to try to reverse engineer it, which may not always be exact.
http://jonathanbolls.blogspot.com/
FYI, I created a calculator that follows NCBE’s standard psychometric practice for essay scaling.
https://seperac.com/zcalc-raw-scaled.php
If you play around with this calculator, you will find that the higher the MBE mean or the lower the standard deviation, the higher the scale. Please note that I believe all my calculators/calculations are reliable but there is no way of knowing for certain. The bar examiners are notorious for releasing very little about the exam, so people like me have to try to reverse engineer it, which may not always be exact.
