have a question regarding the calculation of scores

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Topic: have a question regarding the calculation of scores
PostWed Oct 17, 2007 8:23 pm Reply with quote
I just took the Power prep 2nd test. I solved quantitative but just clicked on "d" for each question on verbal without reading any question.

I had 14 incorrect answers including 2 in the first 10 questions and got 48 from Q. How is this possible? I always get less than 3 incorrect answers on other practice tests. are prep tests really harder than others?
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PostWed Oct 17, 2007 8:31 pm Reply with quote
No one is quite sure how the scoring algorithm works--GMAC only reveals at a high level that the test is adaptive gets more difficult as you answer questions correctly.

It is certainly possible to get a lot of questions incorrect and still get a high score. I would search through Stacey Koprince's old posts on this topic. She has some good perspective on this...
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Stacey Koprince
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PostSat Oct 27, 2007 2:49 pm Reply with quote
Yes, take a look at some of my previous posts. The test is not scored based on percentage correct. The algorithm scores based upon the difficulty levels of the questions you answer. Almost everyone gets approximately half of the questions right and half wrong - it's only below about a 300 and above about a 720 that this starts to skew away from 50/50. And even those of us scoring in the 99th percentile are getting a decent number of questions wrong.

However much you study, you will not get all of the questions right. In fact, you will get a large number of questions wrong - and I can say that having no idea what score you will get b/c it's true for everyone. It's important to understand that before you go in or you will get psychologically messed up and your performance will suffer.
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