A2 UMS vs raw question

Hi all, just a quick question, we are always told that you need 90% UMS to get an A* at A2,

But for an exam out of 90 raw mark, can the boundary for an A* ever be more than 90% (i.e. in this case 81 raw marks out of 90)?

So for ex, if the exam is fairly "easy", and many people get good raw marks, could the boundary be shifted to, say, 85/90, so in fact higher than 90%?

There was some debate about this yesterday about this year's chemistry unit 4 Edexcel paper, so having an answer to this would be very helpful!

Thanks

Reply 1

cora06140

OP

12

Sorry, I think I may not have worded this correctly....

So try again!

Can the boundary for 90% UMS require more than 90% raw marks? In other words, if almost everyone got 84/90, would you need 84/90, which is 93% raw mark, to get 90% UMS? Or do they cap the grade required for 90% UMS at 81/90 (90% raw marks)?

Hope that makes more sense!

Thanks

(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 2

crayolaguy

7

Original post by cora06140

Sorry, I think I may not have worded this correctly....

So try again!

Can the boundary for 90% UMS require more than 90% raw marks? In other words, if almost everyone got 84/90, would you need 84/90, which is 93% raw mark, to get 90% UMS? Or do they cap the grade required for 90% UMS at 81/90 (90% raw marks)?

Hope that makes more sense!

Thanks

ok so after reading both of your posts it seems like you're just talking about specific exams. To get an A* in A2 you need 80% average overall from AS and A2 and your A2 units need to average at 90% UMS. So this means that if you have 2 units in A2 and each of them has 100 UMS.... you need 180/200 UMS for your A2 exams.

The grade boundaries you're talking about are exam specific... so yes it may be that if you get 90% raw marks it probably doesn't translate to exactly 90%... it depends how hard of easy the exam was for all students. I would say a lot of the time you need less than 90% raw marks for 90 UMS in subjects unless it's really easy.

But to answer your question basically they can make it more than 90%.

Perfect example being Accounting Unit 1, grade boundaries are pretty high for this and to get 90% last year you needed 75/80 raw marks... which is 93.75% raw markss only for 90% UMS... all depends on the subject.

Reply 3

Compost

19

Original post by cora06140

Hi all, just a quick question, we are always told that you need 90% UMS to get an A* at A2,

But for an exam out of 90 raw mark, can the boundary for an A* ever be more than 90% (i.e. in this case 81 raw marks out of 90)?

So for ex, if the exam is fairly "easy", and many people get good raw marks, could the boundary be shifted to, say, 85/90, so in fact higher than 90%?

There was some debate about this yesterday about this year's chemistry unit 4 Edexcel paper, so having an answer to this would be very helpful!

Thanks

Yes, the raw % needed to get at least 90% UMS can be more than 90. I have seen Edexcel Maths units where you needed to get 72/75 to get 90/100UMS. However, I can't remember seeing this for any subjects other than Maths.

Reply 4

crayolaguy

7

Original post by Compost

Yes, the raw % needed to get at least 90% UMS can be more than 90. I have seen Edexcel Maths units where you needed to get 72/75 to get 90/100UMS. However, I can't remember seeing this for any subjects other than Maths.