And the poll thread and he J-CAT thread and every other thread
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Nah, nobody ain’t got time for that.
I just skip to the bottom.
Also, I’m usually on the forum on my phone (during the day), so I would not be able to sit a J-CAT instead, or when I’m too braindead to do anything else (like right now) which would give me a shitty score.
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Just taken this for the first time. I’m taking N5 this weekend.
Not sure how accurate it is given that I guessed so many of the questions, or gave an educated guess. Probably should have let it time out instead when I didn’t know the answer.
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How is the J-CAT scored?
Are there penalties for incorrect answers?
The questions get progressively more difficult as you answer correctly. If you answer incorrectly, you get easier questions. So effectively it finds your sweet spot, where the difficulty is just right and your grade is based on that.
I see so if I didn’t give an answer then would it still lower me down to a lower-level question?
That’s what happened to me.
The grammar part goes really fast, so often I didn’t get enough time to answer.
i see
i think a good solution would be to practice reading more and read more native material in order to build fluency and a faster reading time and to familiarize yourself more with grammar.
Thank you wanikani members for informing me that this exists 
I took the test today to see how I’d fare for the N3 test this Sunday. It took about three days after I signed up for them to send me the password, and it initially went in my junk mail folder.
Listening: 57
Vocabulary: 34 (ouch haha…)
Grammar: 47
Reading: 48
Total: 186 (Intermediate, between N3 and N2)
In retrospect, perhaps I should have just let the timer run out for questions that I definitely didn’t know (I think I got some lucky guesses) for a more accurate score. I’m a bit more confident now, but I still have a lot to study.
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I’m not sure about that (at least, it didn’t work so far).
When reading, you learn to recognize grammar patterns, but you won’t learn rules to use them.
Instead, writing (and getting corrected) would be more effective.
idk its been working for me so far
I took the J-cat one year ago at a Japanese university and got 168 points I think.
Done! First time trying this after learning of its existence on this site just last Sunday. Lol. I started learning Nihongo last year (June 2017), passed the December 2017 N4 and now I’m about to take N3 this Sunday. This motivated me somehow knowing that I’m on track. 
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Can relate… my reading has become fine, I can recognise grammar rules even. But writing/producing sentences is a chore. I’m getting corrections on HelloTalk but not sure how useful given sometimes I don’t know if it is correct (judging by some English corrections others make) and also not much explanation to accompany the corrections… but better than not getting corrected! I think.
Last September.
Today.
Hmm, not too much progress since September. Not surprised, though, I haven’t been studying a lot.
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Your listening certainly is impressive though!
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This makes no sense whatsoever to me and I’m both happy that I am apparently better than I thought (or the JLPT is easier than I thought) but I’m also furious that I have the most points in reading which I started to just answer randomly after the first few questions and realizing that I am not that fast a reader.
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I wish there was guidance on what to do if you’re not sure of the answer. It seems like it must be best to let it time out rather then guess because any lucky guesses are going to artificially inflate your score.
I do not know. There are some kinds of questions where you can have some degree of knowledge but not be certain, and that is a type of knowledge about Japanese. So it depends on exactly what the test is measuring. If you have absolutely no clue though, probably just letting the time run out is best. But if you have even a vague hunch, then it might actually be a measure of how much you do know.
The chances that you’ll guess right again and again are fairly low, so it should come back to an appropriate level at some point. Obviously there’s a little bit of wiggle room in the resulting score if you guess right on the last question or something.
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