Beat The GMAT - the MBA Social Network

We are ready to answer your questions about the GMAT exam. Below are questions we recently answered from students via our social media channels.

Question: Does the GMAT exam have a fixed number of questions which would be asked for each subsection of the Verbal section? Is there a set number of Sentence Correction, Reading Comprehension and Critical Reasoning? Is this also the case for Quant? Will there be a fixed number of questions for Problem Solving and Data Sufficiency?

Official GMAT: Every exam includes a fixed number of scored questions of each type. Scored questions are those that count toward your score. However, you may receive a varying number of total questions of each type because pre-test (experimental) questions that do not count are also included in the examination.

Question: Say a candidate is really strong in Critical Reasoning and answers a bunch of 700-800 level CR question correctly. Does this mean the subsequent Sentence Correction and Reading Comprehension questions he receives will also be in the 700-800 level? Or is each question type judged independently? Meaning there could be a situation where the candidate receives 700-800 level questions in Critical Reasoning (because he’s strong there) but at the same time he receives 500-600 level questions in Sentence Correction and Reading Comprehension because he is weak there?

Official GMAT: That’s a great question! Your difficulty level depends on your ability to answer questions of the same question type. So your performance on Sentence Correction will not affect the questions you receive for Reading Comprehension or Critical Reasoning. Or any questions you encounter in the Quant section, for that matter. Thanks for asking!

Question: On my GMAT exam that I took a couple of months back I scored a 50 in the quant section. On my official score report my quant percentile was reported as 92%. However on the latest percentile rankings, I’ve noticed that a quant score of 50 now corresponds to a percentile of 90% . Right now if I send my score reports to schools , what will my quant percentile be?

Official GMAT: Congratulations on your GMAT score! You did really well! To answer your question, the percentile ranking charts are updated in January with the most recent percentile rankings. Schools will typically refer to the most recent percentile ranking chart, regardless of when you sent your scores. I hope that helps!

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