Thanks Brad! I'm still excited about that last meet. Oh, and Micheal Turnell from Ato-whatever the name of his school is was a one man team. I think he might've been been in San Antonio visiting and he wanted to keep in practice or something. Who knows? His 300 was a pretty impressive score though.

 As for the difficulty of TMSCA tests at different stages of the season, I'm gonna have to honestly say that it can be random. But, I can say that TMSCA NS and UIL NS are about the same in difficulty, except TMSCA makes an attempt to test over White's material and then some. One thing I dont like about TMSCA is that they have alot of measurement manipulation problems. They also like to do test heavily over fractions. Beyond that, its hard to generalize about TMSCA. I have last year's season, and I've been dissecting it a test at a time. For every ten questions they ask, they'll have about 5-7 will have been on a previous test in that same area of questions, with the others being reletively simple questions that can be about pretty much anything. That being said, I personally think that TMSCA lends itself to be a faster test. I think this is mainly because their test writers have to make 12 of these tests a year, so the question types they put on there are generally much easier to figure out. TMSCA 1-5 will usually be a little easier than the "UIL" type Dr. Numsen tests. TMSCA 7-11 is generally just about on par with the "UIL" Dr. Numsen tests because they start to have questions that build off of previous strategies tested in previous tests. Say like they ask you what 1/4 of and 1/3 of a mile was on previous tests, can you do 1/12 of a mile? Its that kind of thing in NS. for them. Now, also remember that TMSCA 7 and 8 will probably be easier than 9-11, simply because I think they try to give kids a break on the first few tests given right after winter break. Or maybe not. I guess it depends on the test. From you, I'll expect around a 350 something on 8, and from there you should stay in the 300-350 range.

On math and science, the test writers get increasingly mean. after tests 1-5. Math in TMSCA is inordinately tedious. Now take that tedium and square it for every test that transpires. I'm serious about that. Each math test gets slower, and slower, and slower... By the end of it, you just want to go to sleep... Anyways, compared to UIL, TMSCA is about a million times harder. Well not harder, just more tedious. 1-5 are generally around UIL district and region level in tediousness. And 7-11 cant even really be compared to UIL because it becomes a calculator test almost due to the tedium required to solve things out by hand. I wish they'd revamp their test and make it somewhat easier to take, but eh... whatever. Its good to solve things that are more like the things you'd solve for in the real world. Its just annoying to do that 60 times tho. In Science, the tests get progressively harder. The material they test comes out of their shuams books, tho, so it can be adjusted to. It just depends on what material they decide to test on each test. There's very little commonality between any of them. To be good at TMSCA all year long, you really do have to know it all.

In calc, the difficulty doesnt seem to waver that much. I scored a a 165-206 on all the tests from 2004-2005. So yeah... Thats all I have to say.

 Gotta go!

Zack

350 on tmsca #8 ... maybe :P 4 weekends of competition in a row is gonna be crazy. Last year (and this year so far) I have had ~about a month between meets. It's probably a good thing I didn't go to Elkins this weekend... had tons of homework. English HW by itself: write an argumentative essay, read The scarlet letter, read lit book readings..... :(((

Does TMSCA sell their old tests on CD, or just paper?

Zack, do you happen to have a copy of the TMSCA test # 7?

yeah. is there any way that you can post it on this forum or something. i would really appreciate it if you could.

Just the NS test, or would you like the others too? Also, I'm not sure if I can post them here, but I am pretty sure that I can scan the test and email it to y'all.

Zack