Test Results and Evaluation

Test results

As we need a few days for evaluation and quality assurance, your result will be made available for download in your user account no later than ten days after the test. 

The dates are chosen so that you have enough time to send your test result to the universities or, in the case of PhaST, to the Foundation for University Admission (Hochschulstart) before the application deadline.

You will receive your test result this way regardless of whether you have agreed to send your result to one or more universities.

Check our FAQ for more information about test results.

How is evaluation done?

The first step is to determine the number of exercises evaluated and solved for each module and the overall test. There are also occasional non-evaluated exercises interspersed. In the next step, the so-called standard value is calculated, i.e. the number of correct evaluated answers is converted into a scale with a mean value of 100 and a standard deviation of 10. One standard value is calculated for each module and one for the overall test. The standard value for the overall test is calculated – like the standard score for the modules – on the basis of the total number of correctly solved exercises and not as an average of the standard values for the individual module. Since the calculation of the standard value also takes into account the difficulties determined empirically, so that the results of several test rounds in a test are comparable.

If a test participant has a standard value of 100, this will correspond to the arithmetic mean – always in relation to the total number of all participants.

Approx. 34 percent of all test participants score between a standard value of 100 and 110; the same number has values between 90 and 100. About 48 percent of the participants obtain values between 100 and 120; the same number applies to values between 80 and 100. Only approx. 2 percent of all test participants have values above 120 or below 80.

In addition to the standard values, the exact, empirically determined percentile ranks are given for the individual modules as well as for the overall test. Just like the standard values, the percentile rank for the overall test is calculated as a “separate value” and not as the mean value of the percentile ranks across the individual module. The percentile rank indicates the percentage of participants who achieved a worse result.

What is the reason for all this?

The conversion to standard values and percentile ranks makes it possible to compare results from different modules directly with each other or with the result in the overall test, even if the individual modules contain different numbers of exercises .