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Cambridge applicants and CIE

TurpanBazaar

Deleted post

(edited 10 years ago)

Reply 1

chowkat

Original post by Xueni Bian

Wall of rant regarding CIE marking system and Cambridge international applicants. :redface:

All applicants, home or overseas are compared given equal chance on all aspects possible. Yes I get it. No hating here. Equality is essential.

My biology teacher has taught in Zone 3 and 4 for a very long time and this is his first batch of students writing AS level in Zone 5 (China, HK, Macau etc). He said according to his experience students who are able to achieve around 90% in mock exams and tests will have their marks brought up by the curve to about 98% or close to full mark. And I have never achieved less than 90% in any of his mocks ever. In the end? Not 98%, I received a mark of 89% for AS Biology, a slap in the face.

The same happened, to friends of mine if not to me, in other subjects. Disappointment, everybody “underperformed” and puzzled many of the most experienced teachers we have who have spent half of their lives teaching in other zones.

The Curriculum Manager at my school has explained to us that CIE wants a certain proportion of students with “a”/“A*” grades at AS/A2 level from every zone and all our scores are multiplied by the same number to achieve that proportion. It's just that that number is normally more than 1 so the marks are scaled up, not scaled down like ours have been. My father who have worked at universities all his life explained that there is nothing anyone can do because he point of this system is to elect only the best and most academically able children from each individual zone. But if my marks are scaled so that I can be compared to the people in my zone how can that same set of marks be used to compare me against Cambridge applicants from another zone, another system, ranked according to another population of students? Say if my school was in and I wrote my exams there with the same effort being put in my average would be 5-7 percentage points higher than the one I have now? Just because of a difference in location? And this goes for everybody then, I assume, our marks are adjusted to fit the trend in our zone yet we’re using it to apply to universities in another zone.

Of course everything is more complicated when it’s global. CIE cannot provide the same services (UMS-RAW MARK calculators, resitting individual module etc) as other boards but the more you think about it the less sense it makes and less fair it sounds.

Thank you for bearing with me.

We do a level cie biology in school and I see where you are coming from. I still find it difficult to understand how they use the raw marks to convert it to the grade.

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Reply 2

TurpanBazaar

Deleted post

(edited 10 years ago)

Reply 3

Bomb

Original post by Xueni Bian

The results sheet they hand out to the teachers are so confusing. My (experienced) biology teacher thought we all got 90s and 80s and I got 100 when that column had a total of 130.

I understand how you feel. I am also an applicant for Cambridge 2014 entry (for medicine) under the CIE programme and I am in zone 6. While my classmates and I thought we did well in the AS biology exam last year, I only got 89% and him 92%, the top score in my country was 93%. This confused me really as according to scaling the top score in a country should be scaled to 100% but then I noticed there are other countries in zone 6 which may have done much better than mine?

Regardless, another thing to rant about on CIE is that the top in the world score across the exam board for A level chemistry was 98% for 2009 (which my friend received), this is across all zones I presume so why is that not moved to 100%?

Then on the Cambridge stalking page I saw a guy with 100% in Chemistry, so there are people out there getting 100%s in other A level exam boards in the UK while for CIE the top in the world score had been 98% (I am not sure what the top in the world score is last year but certainly it's not 100%).

But then again, we are trying to apply to universities in their country as international students and therefore a tougher marks scheme is totally understandable, and presumably (my country as an example, usually the more academically able in my country study A levels while others study other qualifications, while in UK most studies A levels I guess, so that may be why we are marked harder)?

On a side note, all our CIE results are a Percentage Uniform Mark out of 100, what do you mean by out of 130 (Or do you mean raw mark? I think for AS sciences P1 is out of 40, P2 out of 60 and P3 out of 30)? If then 100/130 got you a 89% then that means you were scaled up?

(edited 10 years ago)

Reply 4

Nicholasmtm

A lot of my friends from my college got top in the world for AS Mathematics and their Percentage uniform mark for Maths is 95. How weird! From Malaysia by the way :P

Reply 5

Bomb

Original post by Nicholasmtm

A lot of my friends from my college got top in the world for AS Mathematics and their Percentage uniform mark for Maths is 95. How weird! From Malaysia by the way :P

Top in the world, or country?

Reply 6

TurpanBazaar

Deleted post

(edited 10 years ago)

Reply 7

TurpanBazaar

Deleted post

(edited 10 years ago)

Reply 8

Bomb

Original post by Xueni Bian

I'm in the same zone as Nicholasmtm and a friend of mine got 95 (PUM) in maths and received no such award. According to raw marks I got 97 but was scaled down to 93.

It's ok guys. What's done is done. I'm sure they're aware of it to some extent.

Hopefully they do, while the average Cambridge offer holder is around 95%, what would you think the average of International CIE be, lower or higher? Take into account the grading system but also the competition of internationals, I am not too sure myself.

Original post by Punishmen

Just representative of zone I should think.

I think so too.

Original post by Nicholasmtm

A lot of my friends from my college got top in the world for AS Mathematics and their Percentage uniform mark for Maths is 95. How weird! From Malaysia by the way :P

May I ask what year is this, and which session (June or November)?

Reply 9

Nicholasmtm

Original post by Bomb

Top in the world, or country?

World

http://www.taylors.edu.my/en/college/programmes/pre-u/cal/academic_achievements

Reply 10

Bomb

Original post by Nicholasmtm

World

http://www.taylors.edu.my/en/college/programmes/pre-u/cal/academic_achievements

Top in the world at 95%!? CIE does mark weirdly, since my friend achieved 100% in AS math for June 2012 and in the end for A level math and got top in country but not the world. I don't think my mate's math would necessarily be better than your classmates, therefore shows how the range in CIE scores in different sessions.

That means the range in scores for different exam sessions change so dramatically, therefore results from different years cannot even be compared.

(edited 10 years ago)

Reply 11

Bomb

Original post by Xueni Bian

Original post by Nicholasmtm

World

http://www.taylors.edu.my/en/college/programmes/pre-u/cal/academic_achievements

Original post by Nicholasmtm

A lot of my friends from my college got top in the world for AS Mathematics and their Percentage uniform mark for Maths is 95. How weird! From Malaysia by the way :P

Therefore I don't think it is possible for international CIE offer holders could have an average UMS near 95%, as top in the world is 95% for math for that year, even if they get close to 100s in other subjects.

Reply 12

Ceryni

This seems crazy; I'm with edexcel and although my average across A2 maths is around 95% (took all the modules but C4 alongside my other ASs), if you counted only my AS maths modules - C1, C2 and M1 - my UMS average would be 100%!! Quite a lot of people in my Further Maths class got 100 ums, or close to it, in those 3 modules as well, so I'm hardly an exception :colondollar:

Really don't understand why different exam boards don't use similar scaling methods , seeing as UMS marks can be so important for Cambridge :dontknow: