DCTP Forums

it depends on how old the system is, but yeah, it's possible. Older machines used techniques that required the marks to have certain properties of opaqueness for certain wavelengths of light, which graphite could accomplish, but not pen ink.

It shouldn't matter in newer systems that could just use image analysis I'd imagine, but a lot of school systems don't exactly have the newest technology. I dunno about where you are, but out here, whenever I was in school and we would take a machine-scored test, they'd always ask, "so, does everyone have a #2 pencil?"

anyway, you could ask a teacher to perhaps look at your sheet + the scoring for the first section to see if there are discrepancies, if you're interested.

In my experience, I've always been told to use a pencil whenever it's a machine grading. And I was told to be extremely careful with my markings as well because any gaps or whatever risk the machine not recognising it as your answer (and also if you make mistakes, erase VERY well). Stuff like that was drilled into me from the age of 9 because that was when I took my first standardised test =\