Hello everyone,

It is about time that I make a good contribution to the ASG community.
While spending a year in promotable status before my promotion to Sergeant, I've discovered several different tools and other ways to maximize your knowledge.
Among this is the Sergeant and Staff Sergeant eligible Trend Report. The trend report is basically an extended spreadsheet which shows how many people in your MOS you are competing against and more importantly it shows the average of the cut-off scores for the last six months in the last column.
Now the strange thing I discovered is that the trend report usually gets released several days before cut-off scores are released. Usually it is updated on the 13th of each month. That means that they've updated the average cut-off scores of the last six months to reflect the cut-off scores of the unreleased month.

Basically this is what you to do calculate the scores. Go to the trend report around the 13th of the month. Find your MOS and figure out whether you want to calculate for the primary or secondary zone. Do the AVERAGE SCORE/CUT-OFF for the last six months times SIX, ie. 740 times six = 4440. Then once you calculated the average times six you just subtract the last 5 months of cut-off scores of that big number, ie. 4440 - 798 - 756 - 720 - 714 - 743 (just example). Whatever is left over is the value of X, the number you don't know which is the cut-off score for that month.
The way you get the last few months worth of cut-off scores is by jumping on Armystudyguide.com and guide on to the promotion points section of the website.
You can find the trend report on this website: https://www.hrc.army.mil/site/protect/Active/epptrend/ptrend.htm Remember you are looking for it to be updated before you can do the math. Right now I can't predict 1 May cut-off scores until the trend report is updated on the 13th or so of April.

Confused yet?

I'm running low on time right now, but I'll run through a practice run with you guys later. Remember, this is not always guarenteed to work, so do not get your hopes up and crushed if this method is wrong. So far I've only been wrong one time, and the other times I've been off by one point on each MOS.

Hope this is some good knowledge for you guys and that this will help ache some of those pre-jitters about not knowing whether or not you'll make it. Plus it is good knowledge for your unit as well because your unit would love to know cut-off scores before they come out.

thats some good information

Alright. Since people are probably confused on how to calculate it with my above description we'll walk through an example.

Lets act like the cut-off scores have not been released yet for 1 April. When the trend report gets updated, which this month was done on 12 March according to the above mentioned website, is when you can start calculating.

Lets calculate the E-5 scores for 1 April without looking at the actual cut-off scores.
We'll look at the trend report first. The average cut-off scores over the last six months (including the cut-off score we don't know yet) is 613 primary and 617 secondary.

Average score 6 months - 613 - 617
We calculate that number times six.

613 * 6 = 3678
617 * 6 = 3702

What we do then is subtract the cut-off scores of the last 5 months.
We'll do primary zone first.

3678 - 590 March - 677 Feb - 573 Jan - 602 Dec - 581 Nov = 655.

The answer of the above math is the cut-off score for 1 April. After checking the actual cut-off score is 654. So now you know how you can calculate it. Like the math above, you will most likely be off by a point or so, but at least you will have been able to calculate cut-off scores prior to the scores being officially released.

Lets try it again with the secondary zone:
617 (average of six months) * 6 (6 months)= 3702
3702 - 596 - 694 - 573 - 603 - 581 = 655. The actual score for the secondary zone was 654 as well, and thus once again we're only off by one point.

I really hope this made it a little easier for you guys to understand. Let me know what you guys think, and if it helps you figure out your scores prior to cut-off.

I did it with SSG 68W,

and for the past 5 months its been 730ish to 780ish. (i wrote the ezact numbers somewhere else)

And did your formula, which had it be 798.

What was it THIS month, yep 798. Ezact.

...Now the time just starts ticking down to the 12--14th of the month for the NEXT SGT/SSG trend report!!!!


Thanks again!

WOLVE

I am alble to find old cutoff scores easily.

How can i archive OLD trend reports from past months????

Now from a numbers view if we took the last 6 months we should be able to get the same average but when I do it the avarage is different I took the last 6 months and got a 745 whlie they got a 755. Whats up?

ah HA! And the smoke clears... But here's a question. Why wait for the trend report? Is it accurate enough if I just do an average of the SZ cutoffs for the last six months?

I tried that but to even get close to what the trend report said was the average score I had to dvide the last 6 months by 5.925 instead of 6 so I have no idea how they do it.

I've spent my entire day trying to calculate a trend report average, to no avail. There's gotta be another factor in how they calculate, other than just the average of the last six months. Either that, or I just blow at math (which is TOTALLY feasible...)

or just wait until the scores are posted! what's the rush??

Because some of us have ADD and can't sit still . Not to mention that cutoff scores are coming later and later and with more confusion lately.

It's actually really easy, I'll explain it.
First you need to get the average cut-off score from the trend report for your MOS. Then once you have that you need to take that number and multiply it by 6. Take your answer and then subtract the last 5 months of cut off scores for your MOS, the number you're left with is the cut-off score for the following month. I'll show you the math below..
trend report average score from march
MOS 92F SGT PZ 675
675x6=4050
you take that number and subract the cut-off scores from november 06 to march 07, I'll do the math below.
4050-619=3431-798=2633-613=2020-798=1222-612=610
610 is going to be the cut-off score for april.
Hope you understood that if not let me know.

Well first thats not the problem that is the easy part now just finding how they come up with the average is, I think the average points of a given MOS has something to do with the equation they use. And now I wouldn't say that its ADD or ADHD that we have but more as it is that we want to get promoted. I comparison its more like a kid at christmas.

I understand, because that's the same thing Wolve said in previous posts. Like Crazy Doc said, there's an unknown factor somewhere.

Sorry for the late reply all.

Okay, so you've figured out the math part but the numbers don't match? Of course I'll tell you to double check your math, but also, understand that these numbers do not always match. This does not always work out, but it gives you a good estimate of what points will be like. I don't want to give false hope to anyone with this, but this is just a possible way of predicting the cut-off scores a few days early. It doesn't always work though, and that is because there are variables that we do not know about that may offset the numbers.
Sometimes this does not work. Use it as a guide, not as something you would put your full faith in. If I have some time I'll see what I can do when the trend report comes out, for a few MOS and do the calculations on my end, so we can see if we come out with the same.