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Tax laws are frequently amended, so the AICPA has specific guidelines for updating the relevant REG questions. This pre-test period is also used to assign a difficulty level to questions for grading purposes, and questions continue to undergo statistical analysis based on the live exam. The pre-test questions that meet the AICPA’s standards are included as operational questions on later iterations of the exam. While no one likes to be a guinea pig for experiments-especially on an exam this difficult-keep in mind that your score on these questions will not count. The AICPA already knows what topics the operational questions test and how difficult they are, so it can analyze candidate performance on pre-test questions with the operational questions serving as a sort of control.
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This lets it study how suitable the questions will be for future use. Pre-test questions are potential future exam questions the AICPA is trying out by inserting them among real exam questions on REG and other CPA Exam sections. The AICPA looks to continuously evolve and improve the CPA Exam. Why does the AICPA include pre-test questions on the exam? See more about what makes the CPA Exam so difficult. Your performance on MCQ testlets does not impact how difficult your TBS testlet will be. It’s not worth using valuable testing time trying to figure out the difficulty of your second MCQ testlet. You can encounter a very difficult question in a medium testlet or a relatively easy question in a difficult testlet. If you do not perform well on the first testlet, you will receive another medium testlet. If you perform well on the first testlet, you will receive a difficult testlet. The difficulty of the next testlet is determined by your performance on the first.
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The first MCQ testlet you receive will be of medium difficulty. In short, harder questions are worth more points. Like the other CPA Exam sections, the second REG MCQ testlet adapts to your performance on the first.Īccording to the AICPA, there isn’t an advantage or disadvantage to receiving harder or easier questions because the exam takes question difficulty into account during grading.
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The AICPA prescribes two levels of difficulty Opens in new window to MCQ testlets: “medium” and “difficult.” This indicates the average difficulty of questions within the testlet.
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