GMAT Strategy

Hi vivekkapoor73,

First off, a 740/Q49 is an outstanding score (it's well above the 90th percentile overall) and it's a score that will make any Business School happy.

Since you were curious about this specific situation, here's some information and perspective:

Any question that is left unanswered in the Quant and Verbal sections is marked as 'incorrect' AND is 'penalized.' On that last question, if you bubbled in a one of the answers before time ran out, then you are credited with answering the question (even if you have not submitted the answer). If you didn't bubble at all, then you did not answer the question and were penalized accordingly.

It's tough to say whether that one question impacted your score at all, for a couple of reasons:

1) It might have been an experimental question (which means it did not count).
2) We would need to know how you were performing on the prior few questions (were you getting them correct, incorrect, in a "string", etc.) to know how this one question impacts the "path" that you were on.

The short answer is that if it impacted your score at all, it likely would not have been by more than 10 points.

The article that David references actually refers to an old study (from 2009) and if you look into it, you'll find that there are some questionable elements to the study and the deductions that were made from it.

All of this is moot, of course, since you've earned an amazing score.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

Because the GMAT scoring algorithm is complicated (and because you never know which are experimental), it's hard to say exactly how much you're penalized for a skipped answer. But based on data from GMAC, it's at least double the penalty for a wrong answer. For example, missing 5 questions at the end could drop someone who would've been around a 70th percentile down to around a 55th percentile.

That said,
a) missing one question at the end wouldn't hurt your score considerably. It would be a 10 point difference, if any at all.
b) the difference between a 740 and a 760 is negligible. A 740 already shows very impressive capabilities, so there's no school out there that would accept you with a 760 but reject you with a 740.

Hi Vivek,

Of the 7 questions that you got wrong in the Quant section, how many of those questions were "gettable" and how many were just "too hard"? If you want a Q51, then you have to nail all of the "gettable" questions.

Since you got 3 of the last 4 questions incorrect (and that last question went unanswered), that "string" at the end of the Quant could have cost you some points (again, not many, but you asked).

With 3 days before your GMAT, I would recommend that you not do too much. Do some light review, but try to relax a bit and make sure that you get a good night's sleep before your Exam.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

Hi Vivek,

The silly mistakes that you admitted to on the earlier questions likely had a far greater impact on your score than not answering the final question (assuming that all of those questions 'counted"). So if one of your goals is to score a Q51, then eliminating the silly mistakes is a MUST. That almost always involves taking slightly more notes than you normally do.

As it stands, taking notes actually SAVES time, since having the proper notes will save you the trouble of having to re-read the prompt.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich