Breaking The 700 Barrier: Steady Performance Is Key

by , Aug 21, 2009

The Scoring Basics

Your overall score out of 800 results from your performances in quant and verbal, each of which is first scored independently on a scale of 0-60*. These subscores are then combined to yield your overall score according to formulae to which only GMAC and ACT (the organizations that own and write the GMAT, respectively) are privy. Each subscore (verbal and quant) receives a percentile ranking as well. This indicates the percentage of test-takers who scored below your level over the past few years. So, for example, if you receive a verbal subscore of 40, you are in the 89th percentile, which means that 89% of all test-takers did not perform as well as you in verbal.

*Note: the 0-60 scales for quant and verbal are not the same; that is, the same score is equal to a different percentile ranking. For example, a score of 40 in quant is the 58th percentile, while a score of 40 in verbal is the 89th percentile - quite a big difference!

The First 7 Questions Myth

One of the great GMAT myths is that the first 7 (or 8, or 10) questions in each section "make or break" your score and that nothing you do after that point has much of an effect on the score you end up with. False! Seven questions are not enough to determine your score. If they were enough, each section would consist of only 7 questions (or maybe 15, so that they could still test their experimentals on us!).

One of the consequences of the myth is the belief that in order to break 700, you must answer those first 7 questions correctly. Untold numbers of test-takers have labored over the first seven, afraid that any mistake will prevent them from reaching that 700 mark. While it is true that you should give each question your best shot within the given time constraints, the absolute number of questions answered correctly is nowhere near as important as the difficulty level of the questions you "earn." The higher the level you earn (by answering things correctly), the more truly "too hard" questions you'll be given, and the more you'll get wrong - but it's perfectly okay to get "too hard" questions wrong! If you have the capability to get, say, a 48 (83rd percentile) on quant, you will also be given questions higher than the 83rd percentile. You can get all of the harder ones wrong and still get your desired 48. (And then, of course, you'd also have to do well on the verbal to earn the overall 700 score.)

The most serious upshot of this myth is what happens when someone spends too much time on the earlier questions: the person has to race to finish the section. Often, test-takers in this position run out of time and either guess randomly or (worse!) leave some questions unanswered at the end of a section. When we guess randomly, we're likely to get the question wrong. When we guess randomly on multiple questions in a row, we're likely to have a string of wrong answers. The per-question penalty for a string of wrong answers actually increases as the string gets longer. The penalty for one wrong answer sandwiched between two correct answers is only about 1 to 1.5 percentile points. The per-question penalty for five wrong answers in a row is about 2 to 2.5 percentile points! Questions left blank suffer the worst penalty of all: a per-question penalty of 3 percentile points.

We also have to consider practical reality: it's extremely difficult to get 7 questions in a row right anywhere on the test, and you already know why. What happens when you get a question right? You get a harder question. What happens when you get the second one right, too? The next one is even harder. Very few people can keep that up for 7 questions in a row! (And, if you are one of those people who can, you don't need to worry about any strategies to maximize your score...)

The nutshell: if you do what this myth advocates, it will be extremely difficult to break the 700 barrier.

Quant vs. Verbal?

Many people come to GMAT preparation in mortal fear of the quantitative section. Probability! Exponents and roots! And it's been years since we first learned this stuff in high school! As a result, many people spend the bulk of their study efforts honing their math skills at the expense of their verbal preparation. The ideal 700 score would be fairly balanced in both sections, but most people are stronger in either quant or verbal. Studies have shown that verbal performance is weighted a bit more heavily than quant performance in the overall score - in other words, it is easier to reach 700 if your verbal is stronger than your quant. In addition, a stronger verbal performance will allow you to score a 700 with a relatively weaker quant performance than the reverse (that is, an equivalently strong quant performance and an equivalently weak verbal performance tends to result in a slightly lower overall score).

So, it seems we should spend a lot more time studying verbal, right? Not so fast! While an excellent verbal performance can indeed take up some of the slack from a weaker quant score, keep in mind that many business schools want to see strong skills in both sections. In fact, some of the top 10 schools apply the "80/80 rule," which requires that successful applicants reach at least the 80th percentile in both sections.

The nutshell: do not put all (or most) of your eggs in one basket: make sure you prepare well for both sections.

Overall, the key is balance: move steadily through the section, answering what you can and letting go when a problem is too hard or would take too long, and plan your study to build relatively balanced scores in both sections.