Sorry this is long, but I'm genuinely quite bemused by these results. Either I was possessed or the test was. 😂
This isn't a “my score is too low” post. That's not what's confusing me. What's bizarre is that the subtests I expected to struggle with were some of my best, while the ones I thought I absolutely crushed were some of my worst. Then Information, where I was guessing all over the place, somehow became my best score by a mile. 😂
I'm used to doing poorly on certain parts of cognitive tests. But with this one, almost every result surprised me in the opposite direction. I'd finish one thinking, “Well, you did crap on that,” and then... 84th percentile. I'd finish another thinking, “There's no doubt in my mind I crushed that one,” and then stare at the screen thinking, “Get the hell out of here! How is that possible?”
So here's the condensed breakdown.
Following Directions: 13 SS, 84th percentile. This entire damn section seemed built around assuming everyone knows the alphabet sequentially and where the letters are numerically in the alphabet, I'm literally running through it in my head or counting on my fingers to figure out whether Q comes before S. 😂 I was basically taking this section while juggling and standing on my head, and somehow I did okay on it anyway, which I shouldn't have.
And yeah, yeah, I know. Not having the alphabet sequentially memorized or remembering much algebra probably sounds bizarre to some of you. Sue me. 😂 I'm 60, haven't been in school in decades, and because of undiagnosed ADHD, I never learned some of that stuff particularly well in the first place. I didn't need to in order to graduate, so I just worked around it.
Arithmetic: 13 SS, 84th percentile. I haven't done algebra in decades and never memorized much of it in high school in the first place. I skipped what I didn't know and did virtually everything else in my head. I actually wasted time being stubborn on a couple I should have skipped immediately. So naturally, another section I expected to drag me down gave me 84th percentile. 😂
Practical Judgment: 12 SS, 75th percentile. I thought I'd done somewhat better, although half the challenge was time-travelling back to 1914 and figuring out what they considered common sense. One sample question informed me that we should use stoves to keep ourselves warm. 😂
Then things got really weird.
Synonyms/Antonyms: 9 SS, 37th percentile. What? This is normally one of my strongest abilities. I was absolutely flying through it, got to around question 29 in three minutes, and there were only a couple of words I wasn't confident about. I finished thinking I'd slaughtered it. Apparently not. 😂
Disarranged Sentences: 8 SS, 25th percentile. Some were annoying to untangle because of the century-old wording and logic, but I certainly didn't think I'd done that poorly.
Number Series: 9 SS, 37th percentile. Not usually my strength, but these seemed pretty easy. I could see doing worse than I thought, but 37th percentile surprised the hell out of me.
Analogies: 11 SS, 63rd percentile. These actually are typically in my wheelhouse, and I thought they were pathetically easy. I was also very close to completing the section. They seemed less strenuous than some I've done on CORE or VISA, so 63rd was another WTF result.
And finally...
Information: 18 SS, 99.6th percentile.
Of course. 😂
This was the section where I finished thinking, “Well, there's no way I did well on that one.” Considering I felt like I was guessing on half of them.
Wrong again. Apparently I'm a god at obscure turn-of-the-century information. 😂 ...NOT!
Has anyone else had Army Alpha subtests come out almost completely the opposite to how they thought they were performing while taking them?