About how many points do you reckon one would ‘lose’ for each level they jump up (or gain if they took a lower version)? If you were to simultaneously take all five levels of the JLPT, what would be the average score ‘gap’ between them? In other words, if you can pass the JLPT N3 with 120/180, what would you estimate that same person at that exact same time would have gotten on N5, N4, N2 or N1?
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There’s not really that much overlap in what the questions are asking. Sometimes vocabulay a bit. Sure. N5 stuff appears on the N1, it has to, but the questions aren’t about it.
If you haven’t studied for the test above the one you’re taking even slightly, it’s entirely possible you get like 0-20/180 without lucky guesses.
N5 170+, N4 160+, N2 barely above guessing if at all, N1 barely above guessing if at all
Not exactly an answer to your question, but here’s the [JLPT coverage by WaniKani level](https://www.wkstats.com/charts/jlpt), so if you’re learning kanji in the WaniKani order instead of the JLPT order you’ll get some exposure to the upper levels as you go.
I took the N1 without doing any preparation or having really practiced the JLPT format and failed with high 90’s/low 100’s. At that point in time I hadn’t used Japanese for about three years—no conversations, no anime, no podcasts, no YouTube—but would occasionally read a novel here and there.
I literally didn’t do anything at all with Japanese for the entire next year—I even took a break from Anki—then took the N2 and got a 180/180 while finishing the test super early.
So the difficulty increase between levels is pretty significant, lol. A perfect N2 score is still failing the N1.
(The second time I took the N1 I passed it. I still didn’t really touch Japanese at all… I just bought a reading/listening comprehension book, which I finished 1/3 of, to get more familiar with the question format/strategy.)
Not simultaneous, but I took the N3 in July 2021 and got a 161/180. I then took the N2 6 months later in December 2021 and got a 115/180. Though I did study generally in those 5 months, I didn’t do much JLPT specific study. I glanced at a SKM’s grammar book, but none of the stuff I learned from there was on the test lmao rip. I think I would have gotten a similar N2 score if I’d taken the test in July along with my N3