GMAT Strategy

You can't directly correlate # correct to a score. The GMAT is an adaptive test, and getting difficult questions correct will award you more 'points' than getting easier questions correct.

It's somewhat of a blackbox--I recommend not over-doing the analysis.

sarzan wrote:
Hi Eric,
Thanks for the info. I made some more research and reached the same conclusion. But now I'm wondering: if its blackbox, then there is no way any available CATs can accurately calculate or even estimate raw scores.

I am only trying to find out how many questions I am "allowed" to get wrong and still get a raw score of 45+

Also, for Quant, is it safe to estimate that of the 37 questions, roughly 19-20 would be PS and the rest DS?

Thanks again

When Eric says it's "somewhat of a black box", the word 'somewhat' is important. The scoring algorithm isn't some kind of state secret or anything; it's just so complicated that there is no value at all to understanding its inner workings in detail, unless you are designing an adaptive test- not something many GMAT test takers are likely to do! The GMATPrep tests that you download from mba.com use the real scoring algorithm, so there are CATs available that can produce reliable raw scores. The scores on tests from test prep companies are less accurate indicators, though certainly some are more accurate than others. I won't comment on individual companies, but you may find evaluations elsewhere on this forum.

As for your question about 'how many questions can I get wrong and still get a 45+', the answer is: a lot. If the only questions you answer incorrectly are the absolute hardest on the test, you can still get a very high scaled score. You might 'only' answer 25 questions correctly, and answer 12 incorrectly, and still do very well on the test- that can happen if you answer all the medium and medium-hard questions right, and only get the supremely difficult questions wrong. If, on the other hand, you answer several medium questions wrong, then start doing very well on the easiest questions on the test, you might also answer 25 correctly, 12 incorrectly, and do much worse. There is no way to translate "x correct, y incorrect" into a score without accounting for the difficulty of the questions.

An average GMAT will have 23-24 PS questions, the rest DS.