Pres Usually Harder than Actual LC?

Mackleton

So, Im just wondering here, you usually hear from past 6th years that the Pres are in general harder than the actual leaving cert exams. Is that the general consensus or do people disagree? If that is the case, my pres were frighteningly easy so Im beginning to doubt that the LC will be any easier.

Thoughts anyone?

JC 2K3

They're probably perceived as "harder" because you've had less time to study for them.

Considering mock exams vary from school to school and year to year it would be impossible to say they're any easier or harder.

Some yes, others no. Either way, you should be looking at the previous exam papers instead of the mocks.

Mushy

I would have said "harder" judging by scores, and generally they marked much harder. Depends on peoples perception of hard too aswell though.

Naikon

Well, I reckon they are marked harder because you are marked on your own merits, not in comparison to other people in the LC so without a bell curve distribution in the mocks, yes I reckon they are marked harder.

ZorbaTehZ

The mocks 'appear' more difficult because peeps don't put as much effort in as they would for the actual LC, plus students may not have everything covered so they therefore don't score as well as they would in the LC.
IMO the difficulty is the same as the actual LC.
*my $0.02

AdMMM

For some subjects, such as Maths, the pre's will be marked harder. In the actual Leaving Cert, the examiner is obliged to read through all your answers, giving attempt marks where neccessary. This isn't the case in the pre's as the correctors are usually teachers who (during the middle of a school year) have plenty on their plate as it is, or college students who will... do I really need to go into details of students?

Another reason cited for them being harder is that they generally aren't as well prepared as Leaving Cert papers. This year, most of my pres were pretty solid and there were only a few errors on the papers here and there.

Of course, the main reason for them being perceived as being harder is that many people don't have their courses fully covered yet and wouldn't have been able to do all the required questions or may have less realistic question options available to them.

I do think that the Pre's this year (when compared to my Junior Cert pre's) were pretty easy going (with the exception of German and Biology). That's what has me worried though!

md99

Yep, as mostly outlined before...

Depends on corrector, company, how much student has studied for them, courses being finished or unfinished....

Often the pre paper itself is easier and less thought is put into making it (ie not much originality, only asking what has gone before etc...) but then it is corrected less leniently which makes up for it somewhat...

It's all opinion, really. One thing for sure is that it is a lot less balanced.

cson

Aside from the whole marking issue two things come to mind

1) its all condensed into about 1 week, considering the LC is spread out over the guts of 3 weeks, that creates a very tiring and pressurised envoirnment, also in the LC even if you have 2 subjects on the one day theres always at least an hour between them. In my school theres 40 mins between exams!

2) Some of the mock questions are worded horrendously badly, and some exceed normal difficulty levels by a fair bit (maths comes to mind)

The mocks are a much tougher test physically IMO

Peyton Manning

Mocks are there to establish what a fair level will be in the actual LC. That said, I thought my Leaving Cert (last year) was rediculously easy in comparison to the mocks.

JC 2K3

cson wrote:

Aside from the whole marking issue two things come to mind

1) its all condensed into about 1 week, considering the LC is spread out over the guts of 3 weeks, that creates a very tiring and pressurised envoirnment, also in the LC even if you have 2 subjects on the one day theres always at least an hour between them. In my school theres 40 mins between exams!

In my school they're over 2 weeks...

cson wrote:

2) Some of the mock questions are worded horrendously badly, and some exceed normal difficulty levels by a fair bit (maths comes to mind)

Ok, I know where you're coming from when you say they're sometimes worded badly. But as for the questions being harder, I dunno. There's been a trend of subjects like maths getting progressively easier over the past few years I suppose. But I doubt mocks questions would be much harder than actual exam questions(same syllabus) from say the mid 90s. So I guess they're easier compared to modern LC exam papers, but not relative to the syllabus.

Waltons

|.Murderer.| wrote:

For some subjects, such as Maths, the pre's will be marked harder. In the actual Leaving Cert, the examiner is obliged to read through all your answers, giving attempt marks where neccessary. This isn't the case in the pre's as the correctors are usually teachers who (during the middle of a school year) have plenty on their plate as it is, or college students who will... do I really need to go into details of students?

Another reason cited for them being harder is that they generally aren't as well prepared as Leaving Cert papers. This year, most of my pres were pretty solid and there were only a few errors on the papers here and there.

Of course, the main reason for them being perceived as being harder is that many people don't have their courses fully covered yet and wouldn't have been able to do all the required questions or may have less realistic question options available to them.

I do think that the Pre's this year (when compared to my Junior Cert pre's) were pretty easy going (with the exception of German and Biology). That's what has me worried though!

I'd agree with all of this, especially about not having courses fully covered.
Another thing that occurred to me during 6th year as well was that if you perceive the pres to be difficult there's a good chance you'll try and put a fair bit more work in for the final exam

md99

Archimedes wrote:

Mocks are there to establish what a fair level will be in the actual LC.

Do you mean that the results are used to distrubute grades etc...

cson

JC 2K3 wrote:

Ok, I know where you're coming from when you say they're sometimes worded badly. But as for the questions being harder, I dunno. There's been a trend of subjects like maths getting progressively easier over the past few years I suppose. But I doubt mocks questions would be much harder than actual exam questions(same syllabus) from say the mid 90s. So I guess they're easier compared to modern LC exam papers, but not relative to the syllabus.

Conversely my maths teacher and other maths teachers I know are of the opinion the SEC are making the exam much tougher, with papers like 2006 becoming the rule and not the exception. I'll agree in comparison to the 90's, the current exams are easier but I would attribute a lot of that to the setting up of the SEC which put an altogether more professional face to the leaving cert exams.

JC 2K3

cson wrote:

Conversely my maths teacher and other maths teachers I know are of the opinion the SEC are making the exam much tougher, with papers like 2006 becoming the rule and not the exception. I'll agree in comparison to the 90's, the current exams are easier but I would attribute a lot of that to the setting up of the SEC which put an altogether more professional face to the leaving cert exams.

Meh, perhaps comparitively to the relatively easy papers of the past 4 or 5 years they'll be harder, but I doubt them getting much harder in time for us anyway. I didn't see how 2006 was any more difficult than 2004 or 2005.

As for the SEC, yeah that makes sense, they probably shuffled things around a bit and maybe different people are setting the exams now, which would account for them being easier.

Corruptedmorals

cson wrote:

Aside from the whole marking issue two things come to mind

1) its all condensed into about 1 week, considering the LC is spread out over the guts of 3 weeks

Nah, my mocks were over 2 weeks. My LC is exactly 6 days..finish on the 13th. So doesn't apply to everyone...

GretchenWieners

Pres were easier for me, got 410 in them, got 390 in the real thing. It depends really.

Peyton Manning

md99 wrote:

Do you mean that the results are used to distrubute grades etc...

No. The mocks are generally harder because they put in difficult questions on purpose to see how the students can handle them. They then look at the overall results and establish whethern they should stick to the same difficulty level questions, or easier (depending on the results).

Making the questions hard on purpose nearly guarantees that no one will get 100% so they can see what level you are at as opposed to making them too easy, where they cant know how good you are.

md99

GretchenWieners wrote:

Pres were easier for me, got 410 in them, got 390 in the real thing. It depends really.

Did you relax too much or not increase your study between the pres and the real thing? Out of interest.. I fear similar things to happen myself!

Peyton Manning

I got 350 on the pres, 475 on the real thing. The wierd thing is, I didnt increase my study load or anything. Id even go as far as to say that I did slightly less study so this is why I think the pre's are genuinely harder than the LC.

Kurtosis

I think people generally get more points in the real thing because they had more time to study. Even if you still study at the same pace for the mocks and the LC proper, odds are you'll do a good 3 months study by June whereas for the mocks you'll only have done 1-2.

Also, another misleading factor is that often the mock papers have questions, or parts of a question, on them which aren't actually on the course, hence why the questions might seem to be "difficult".

Naikon

It doesent help that in geography and physics for example have questions which havent been covered yet in School, so by mock exam time you have about 30 or 40 percent not covered.

JC 2K3

Naikon wrote:

It doesent help that in geography and physics for example have questions which havent been covered yet in School, so by mock exam time you have about 30 or 40 percent not covered.

Depends on your school tbh. In Physics I've personally only not covered about 6% of the course in school. And it's not that hard to learn a chapter or two on your own.

30-40% is a massive amount to have not covered. Especially in somehting like Physics, which is a relatively short course... Or is that an exaggerated percentage?

Naikon

Well more like 20:D
Our physics class is a bit "behind" in terms of finishing the course.
God help the people in the Ordinary Class.
Seriously though I will have to cover a good bit on Nuclear/Modern physics and the options, and a few bits here and there.

cocoa

In regards to maths, the general trend (in the actual LC, not mocks) is for them to get harder, because otherwise they would be forced to issue the same questions over again (with different numbers, obviously...) so I was quite happy when my teacher said that he's mixing in some questions of his own to make the mock that bit harder.

Overall, I don't think mocks are any more difficult, but it would be quite common to raise about 50 points or so by the LC, simply through having studied more, lets face it, the LC is based a hell of a lot more on what you can learn off by heart than on on how actually talented/able you are. So it's logical to assume that you've learned a few extra pieces of information between the mock and the LC

GretchenWieners

md99 wrote:

Did you relax too much or not increase your study between the pres and the real thing? Out of interest.. I fear similar things to happen myself!

It was a mixture, I stopped caring after a while really but also I just got lucky with questions in the pres and the way English is marked. One of my friends went from 465-550 in the short space of time. Depends how committed you are.