GMAT Verbal & Essays

Hi,

Does anyone know how the GMAT builds you Verbal score ?

I am trying to understand how the performance (see attached screenshot) can get me a score of 28 on Verbal !
There were no big blocks of (consecutive) questions which I answered incorrectly … which typically would drag down the score.

There were 11 CR questions, of which I got 8 correct (72%)
There were 13 RC questions, of which I got 7 correct (53%)
There were 17 SC questions, of which I got 13 correct (76%).

Can clearly see that the RC portion was my weakest … nearly half the questions answered incorrectly. Maybe the GMAT gives a big penalty for incorrectly answering RC questions … this would be the only explanation I can think of, regarding a 28 verbal score, and having got only 13 questions wrong in total.

Your thoughts ?

Thanks.
II

Anyone have any ideas ... any of the tutors have any input here ? Thanks again !

Am sorry , That is the great thing bout Gmat. Nobody knows what is behind the screen, Even if somebody knows , that may not remain true too long. There is continously strategies changing behind the screen .

But still i can give my opinion bout ur case. Since you have got good accuracy in SC , The chances are high that you have answered lot of experimental questions correct. cos Sc will ve lot of exp. qns.
And as u said RC holds lot of weightage. Especially qns like Except
and odd man out qns. Dont worry next time it will be entirely different. Hope for good. Concentrate beginning 10 questions.
Can you believe!! I got 21 qns correct and got 31 ! . But I jus got 2 mistakes in first 15 qns !! ...

GMAT is not a exam . ITS a GAME

:!:

Thanks ...

I suppose the real issue from my side is to determine whether the RC questions have a higher weighting in the Verbal.

Also, I cant understand why my score has dropped from 31/32 to a 25 to 28 range !

I really need to improve this and work towards getting a score of 40+. Would appreciate any thoughs or views on strategies here.

Thanks
II

Guys, common this qtn is imp

as per me , 3 pairs of incorrect ans or more incorrect qtns in first few qtns had an impact

any other clues..

If RC has a major weightage, lets give it proportionate time

where are our folks- PC, Logitech, niraj,sudhir, raunek,cramya, and all my other friends lets sort out this

I have a feeling that inference qtns may be assigned a higher rating than direct ones and most of us may not given enough time on those, although we wish so

IMO, here is what happened.

You had a weak start 60% - 1-10

You were just about the recover but get some serious hit between 19-24

This led a lower score and the difficulty of the questions dropped , so did their points...you enjoyed this for a while ( and probably used some extra time) and ran out of time to the end OR the questions started get harder again and you had a weak finish again 33, 36 and 38.

Of course this is all me bullshitting but I am trying to understand how the algoritm works.

www.gmat760.com is a cool place to learn more about the UNSPOKEN rules of the GMAT game.

The key to the success is: USE YOUR TIME and HIT HARD in the BEGINNING and FINISH STRONG and keep moving...GMAT places some tough questions just to tip you off the balance and demoralize you and steal your time. Don't fall into it. Just smile and say WHATEVER and move on...that's okay! And try not to get hit in a row..just like a computer game...Keep that LIFE BAR green

i agree with iamcste on the point that getting questions wrong in a row has a substantial negative effect. also notice that you got more than 3 questions wrong in the first 15.

i also did notice in my Gprep experiences that getting RCs correct would boost my score immensely. this could easily be related to the fact that i got 3-4 RC questions correct in a row (which consequently means that if you get 3-4 RC questions wrong in a row, your score will drop). its is widely known that verbal is weight more than quant when it comes to the overall score.

to build on iamcste's point, what style questions did you get wrong? maybe we can assess a trend out of that. i don't see any other way to truly know if a particular question 'style' has an effect on the score.

i hate this exam.

Here is a thought.

We have almost the same number of experimental questions on both the sections

Quant - 37 questions - 9-10 experimental
Verbal - 41 questions - 9-10 experimental

We have 4 more questions in verbal as compared with quant and same number of experimental questions. Is this the reason why verbal is weighted more heavily. Just an observation.

Also, the reason, why RC is weighted more heavily, because there are more chances of getting consecutive wrongs answers on RC as compared with other parts.

According to my observation, here is what I think, kindly dont take it as a rule

44V - 45V = max 7 incorrect, no more than 1 consecutive incorrect answers.

35V-38V = max 10 incorrect, no more than 2 incorrect consecutive incorrect answers.

From II's image i think where the incorrect choices have hurt him the most is in the pattern from ques 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. I think we should avoid this pattern at all costs.

Any thoughts.