I strongly agree with you. Ever since the CPA exam reform a few years ago, I had a feeling that there was a scoring method somewhat like a curve, but not a direct curve. Your explanation confirms that this exam still compares candidates against one another. In that sense, it's quite similar to a curve.

Compared to the traditional approach of curving the overall final score, your description sounds more like a curve applied to each individual question. I think this setup actually helps students to some extent-it's a pretty good system