What was your online test score with an audition

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triviawayne
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What was your online test score with an audition

Post by triviawayne »

Let's solve the mystery of what is a passing score here.

When you got your audition, what was your online test score that year?
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Re: What was your online test score with an audition

Post by goatman »

Speculation about the cutoff for a passing score is useless. Particularly frustrating are attempts to 'project' passing cutoff based on imaginary curves.
There may be a test curve employed as some kind of exclusionary metric but if so NO one knows how or exactly what it is!

Already posted elsewhere on this Board are anecdotal reports of persons getting the call with score <35 unexpectedly.
There is NO way of predicting or projecting or using pseudoscience to analyze test scoring.

IMHO if you get 80% right (40+) you can be reasonably confident you've made the grade.
In the past 70% (35+) was the cutoff but as noted above, there are known exceptions! ;)
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Re: What was your online test score with an audition

Post by Pineapple Joe »

3 years ago when I got invited to the audition in DC (I never made it onto the show) I had 46 right on the test. I think if I get the audition this time I might dial back my personality a bit... don't know if it was a factor against selection to appear, but I was kind of cocky. If it was because they didn't feel I was sufficiently telegenic I am screwed -- don't think the additional 4 years has made much of an improvement there. Perhaps I need to find a way to get the coordinators liquored up so their judgments on appearance are more liberal.
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Re: What was your online test score with an audition

Post by DysonSphere »

I would be interested to know how the assumed 35 cutoff holds up. I know the discussion has taken place before in various threads, but it would be nice to have one thread to which we could point everyone who asks. Yeah, it's a "pointless" discussion, but so is the vast majority of what people do online.

My wife and I both had high 30's scores last year. She got an audition invite; I didn't get an invitation.
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Re: What was your online test score with an audition

Post by Golf »

If memory serves, more than one auditioner here scored 35. Think scores have gone as high as 49. Didn't seaborgium say he may have scored 34?

But yeah, this is mostly meaningless. We've known for years the number is 35 and any type of average audition score we generate here will have serious sample size issues.
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triviawayne
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Re: What was your online test score with an audition

Post by triviawayne »

I wasn't looking for an average, but more looking to find the lowest score that got an audition.

If someone got less than 35, i would also want to know how positive they were about their score.
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Re: What was your online test score with an audition

Post by davey »

I'm just always accepted the 35. It sound reasonable, and I've always scored above it (with maybe one exceptionally bad year). And until last year, I always got an audition.
So I don't remember all my past scores. Life is so much simpler that way.
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Re: What was your online test score with an audition

Post by skullturf »

davey wrote:And until last year, I always got an audition.
Out of curiosity, what audition city did you usually select when this happened?

I know many people who have auditioned more than once. This makes me suspect that when they randomly draw people to invite to auditions, the random subset probably isn't that much smaller than the total number of people who passed. (E.g. it's probably more likely to be closer to, say, 30% of passers than it is to, say, 3% of passers.)

But I wonder if it varies by region. (For example, I wonder if auditions in New York need to select a smaller proportion of test passers, because of greater numbers.)
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Re: What was your online test score with an audition

Post by DysonSphere »

I wonder if it varies by region. (For example, I wonder if auditions in New York need to select a smaller proportion of test passers, because of greater numbers.)
My wife signed up for Tampa and I signed up for Boston last year. She thought I was stupid for choosing an academic center, and maybe she was right since she got an audition and I didn't (unfortunately she couldn't go).

I signed up for Washington, DC this year because I live here. I've noticed there are a hugely disproportionate number of people from the DC area on the show (fed gov brain drain in action, maybe), so that probably doesn't bode well, although looking at it another way, they're clearly willing to tolerate some disparity since they let all those people on.
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Re: What was your online test score with an audition

Post by davey »

skullturf wrote:
davey wrote:And until last year, I always got an audition.
Out of curiosity, what audition city did you usually select when this happened?

I know many people who have auditioned more than once. This makes me suspect that when they randomly draw people to invite to auditions, the random subset probably isn't that much smaller than the total number of people who passed. (E.g. it's probably more likely to be closer to, say, 30% of passers than it is to, say, 3% of passers.)

But I wonder if it varies by region. (For example, I wonder if auditions in New York need to select a smaller proportion of test passers, because of greater numbers.)
In the online-test era, I've always auditioned in NY. 4 times I think (but I don't hold on to that number either).
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Re: What was your online test score with an audition

Post by immaf »

skullturf wrote:
davey wrote:And until last year, I always got an audition.
Out of curiosity, what audition city did you usually select when this happened?

I know many people who have auditioned more than once. This makes me suspect that when they randomly draw people to invite to auditions, the random subset probably isn't that much smaller than the total number of people who passed. (E.g. it's probably more likely to be closer to, say, 30% of passers than it is to, say, 3% of passers.)

But I wonder if it varies by region. (For example, I wonder if auditions in New York need to select a smaller proportion of test passers, because of greater numbers.)
In the online era, every time I have scored 35 or higher (and once I think I scored exactly 35) I have gotten an in-person audition. The time I think I scored a 34, I did not. I consider that I have been extra lucky, although I suppose it is possible that "random" selection favors people who have had in-person auditions before?

One thing that JEOPARDY! has control over is the number of auditions they do in each city. If more passers have chosen New York, I suspect that they spend more time in New York in order to keep the percentages of people who are invited to in-person interviews equal.
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Re: What was your online test score with an audition

Post by Rafferty Barnes »

immaf wrote: One thing that JEOPARDY! has control over is the number of auditions they do in each city. If more passers have chosen New York, I suspect that they spend more time in New York in order to keep the percentages of people who are invited to in-person interviews equal.
That seems to be the case. I can't recall specifically, but I know they've spent three days in DC before while another site might just have one or two.
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Re: What was your online test score with an audition

Post by immaf »

Of course, there's no telling if JEOPARDY! has changed their process this year. :)
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Re: What was your online test score with an audition

Post by DefCon4 »

I don't remember my exact scores, but the two times I have taken the test I scored in the same range (near 45). The first time, I didn't get an audition, while the second time I did.
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Re: What was your online test score with an audition

Post by billiej »

I've scored mid 30's to 40 pretty much every year and have never been invited to audition. :cry:
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Re: What was your online test score with an audition

Post by earendel »

I've been at this since 2002, before the online test era.

In 2002 I auditioned in Cincinnati. There was only an on-site test, and out of the 70 or so who were in the room, only 5 passed (I was one of them). It was a 50-question test but of course no way of knowing what a passing score was.
In 2003 the Brain Bus came to my town. I went to a local mall and took a 10-question test, passed it and was invited to go to a hotel the next day for the "real" test. Again there were around 70 in the room but only a handful of passers (again I was one of them).
In 2004 it was Nashville. There were 54 in the room and 11 of them passed, including me.
In 2005 I went to Chicago. This time there were 60 in the room and only 7 passed, including me.
All of these were before the online testing process started.

In 2006 I took the online test, and scored 41 out of 50. I received an invitation to audition in Indianapolis.
I was ineligible to take the test in 2007.
I took the test in 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011 and although I scored more than 35 each time, I received no invitation.
In 2012 I took the test and scored 44/50 and was invited to audition in Chicago.
I took the test in 2012-2015, scored enough to pass but wasn't invited.
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Re: What was your online test score with an audition

Post by seaborgium »

Golf wrote:If memory serves, more than one auditioner here scored 35. Think scores have gone as high as 49. Didn't seaborgium say he may have scored 34?
I did score 34, and I got The Call a month later, so I guess everyone can assume that if you're close you bypass auditions altogether.

Seriously: I don't know why my story gets turned inside out, but I took the test in 2007, score unknown, and got an audition that year. Shortly after my 18 months were up they called me. Shortly before my 18 months were up I figured I was close enough, took the test again, and got 34. Maybe the fact that I took the test again brought me to TPTB's attention, I don't know, but I got to the show ultimately on the merits of my 2007 test, on which, again, I don't know what I scored.
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Re: What was your online test score with an audition

Post by Winchell Factor »

immaf wrote:Of course, there's no telling if JEOPARDY! has changed their process this year. :)
For as long as I've been thinking about this issue, I've kind of assumed that one reason why TPTB don't publicize a cutoff score is so that they can raise it or lower it when it is useful to do so. Unusually hard online test one year? Take some 34's (or, you know, whatever n-1 actually is). Surprisingly competitive scores? Make this season's cutoff 36 or 37 (or n+1, n+2).

If I were A Power That Is, I would never, never, never cop to doing that, but I would also maintain as much secrecy about the selection process as possible, in order to avoid being constrained by what I'd said before.

I must reiterate, I don't know this to be true. It's just speculation. But if it's anywhere close to right, it renders most other speculation about cutoff scores pretty pointless.
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Re: What was your online test score with an audition

Post by BobF »

Winchell Factor wrote:
immaf wrote:Of course, there's no telling if JEOPARDY! has changed their process this year. :)
For as long as I've been thinking about this issue, I've kind of assumed that one reason why TPTB don't publicize a cutoff score is so that they can raise it or lower it when it is useful to do so. Unusually hard online test one year? Take some 34's (or, you know, whatever n-1 actually is). Surprisingly competitive scores? Make this season's cutoff 36 or 37 (or n+1, n+2).

If I were A Power That Is, I would never, never, never cop to doing that, but I would also maintain as much secrecy about the selection process as possible, in order to avoid being constrained by what I'd said before.

I must reiterate, I don't know this to be true. It's just speculation. But if it's anywhere close to right, it renders most other speculation about cutoff scores pretty pointless.
I was thinking the same thing because of the discrepancy in perceived difficulty between the east coast test and the central test.
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Re: What was your online test score with an audition

Post by Winchell Factor »

It seems to me, you have to be evenhanded within a cohort of applicants, but you don't have to be consistent from cohort to cohort. Arguably, it might even be fairer not to be.
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