I always assumed it was for the over-achiever who could not believe the fail grade and it threatened their family’s honor.
If someone was scoring over 80% on over 6 practice exams/ mocks and failed… should that person pay the $100? what is a legit reason to request the retabulation?
So the CFA can take you for the retabulation fee. I’ve never heard of anyone being moved from fail to pass.
Peace of mind: Legit
Ive read somewhere in the forum that, in the entire history there was just one person who could overturn his result. Not sure, but I think Monito is right here.
I do not think the %tage has much to do with the final score to an extent though. I believe the way u feel after taking the real thing actually play more role as opposed to Mock/Practice exams.
It’s just to check if the Institute has made a technical error, it’s not a reconsidering of your score or performance. If you believe that they’ve screwed up your results somehow (e.g. you’ve gotten really crap scores when you know you’ve done pretty well), then there might be some reason to do so.
Having said that - Monito’s said it, I have never seen someone moved from fail to pass.
I’ve never heard of a retab changing a result, either. If you like, you could pay me $100 and I’ll be happy to send you a very nicely written letter saying that your score is the same as before.
I’ll even take PayPal.
for Level 3 i think its more relevant since somebody actually has to read your writng etc…for L1/L2 given its scantron, doubt it…the thing is, there is no way to verify if they actually retabbed it…
I believe they say they will not regrade your written test. They might go so far as to add up the points that were given to different problems to see if there was an arithmetic error.
And, yeah, as far as I can tell, you kinda have to take their word for it that they actually did anything other than send a form letter.
I am one of the folks who requested a retabulation several years back on L3 and bchad is correct that they do not actually regrade everything, they just make sure the points were totalled correctly (hence the term retabulation instead of regrading). I can’t speak for anyone else’s decision to have or not have a retabluation done, but in my case I assumed there was almost no chance that it would change my score. The important word there is “almost”. I was comparatively old when I took L3 and knew I didn’t have too many more shots at it due to real world demands. I was also well established in my career and financially comfortable, so $100 wasn’t going to alter my financial situation in the slightest. So, $100 was worth the infintesimal chance that my score was not tabulated correctly. I was also band 10 and my 40/60/80 score was better than a lot of folks who had passed, so I thought one or two missed points might be the difference. Unfortunately they were not, but at least I knew that I had failed because I didn’t know the material well enough and not because some tired grader forgot to include the points from part 4 of an 8 part question in the question’s total score. I retook the next year and passed though and never missed the $100.
I would not have paid for a retab at L1 or L2 though. I also don’t think CFAI offers the retabulations as a way to make extra money. If you read their description of what they actually do and don’t do and how the initial grading is conducted, it becomes pretty clear that it is highly unlikely a retab is going to yield a positive result. I suspect they offer it to avoid being sued by hundreds of people per year who think they passed.
I wonder if a stray mark across the answer form would be the sort of thing that a retab captures and corrects on the multiple-choice part of the exam. i.e. they look at your answer sheet and try to determine if a pencil streak might have invalidated a bunch of answers that would otherwise be valid.
If they can’t prove that you are the source of the pencil streak, then they might actually type your answers in and see if it makes a difference.
I’m really really curious if *any* retabulation has ever made a difference in passing. I’ve never heard of a success.
^ I dont recall the source, but it is my understanding that all failing MC exams are regraded by hand before the official fail is handed down. So, I would think something like that would be caught and the candidate would be given the benefit of the doubt if they have neatly filled-in ovals with correct answers.
My question is whether or not a human grades during retab. I’m planning to ask if this comes up, but rerunning my answers through scantron is not sufficient. Having a human grade the scantron is sufficient. At band 10, 1 or 2 answers could mean difference between pass/fail. While unlikely that any will be different, it’s worth find out.