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Reasonable score despite low accuracy?

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Reasonable score despite low accuracy?

by gmat7m » Wed Oct 15, 2014 7:54 am
Hi,

This is my first post on this forum.

I have been studying on and off for my GMAT alongwith a full-time job for the past 3 months. Today I have started a 31 day schedule to give a mock test every day and finish the OG. I am not too aware of the co-relation between raw scores, scaled scores, percentiles and overall score (/800)

I gave a Veritas (skipped Essay and IR - so that is irrelevant) test today and despite disappointing accuracy levels of ~61% in both verbal and quant I got a score of 710 (refer screenshot).

Would be glad if someone could help me figure this out.
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by Brent@GMATPrepNow » Wed Oct 15, 2014 8:20 am
First of all, congratulations on the great practice test score.

Your scores are not based on how many questions you answer correctly; they're based on the level of difficulty of the questions you answer correctly.

To illustrate this, I'll share an experiment I performed.

When I was writing the article Taking the GMATPrep Practice Tests Multiple Times (https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/03/ ... iple-times), I took GMATPrep Practice Test #1 four times, and each time I answered every second question correctly (I did this for the quant section only)

Given that I correctly answered exactly half of the questions each time, you'd expect my quant scores to be roughly the same for all 4 tests.

My 4 scaled scores were: 19, 23, 26 and 42

This represents a percentile range from approximately 8th percentile to the 63rd percentile.

So, don't worry about how many questions you answered correctly. It has nothing to do with your score.

Aside: If you're interested, we have a free video explaining the GMAT scoring algorithm: https://www.gmatprepnow.com/module/gener ... es?id=1251

Cheers,
Brent
Brent Hanneson - Creator of GMATPrepNow.com
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by gmat7m » Wed Oct 15, 2014 9:00 am
Thanks Brent for your comprehensive reply (I'll begin the video right after this post).

Would be glad if you / anyone else could help me a strategy guide (??) to help chalk out this last one month.

Thanks again!

:)
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by [email protected] » Wed Oct 15, 2014 11:06 am
Hi gmat7m,

Is this the first practice CAT that you've taken? If not, then what were your other scores (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores) on your other CATs?

While a 710 is a great score, this result is questionable since you essentially skipped the first hour of the Test. By skipping the first two sections of the CAT, you didn't deal with the endurance/fatigue issues that are a very real part of taking the full GMAT. You'll have to face the Essay and IR on Test Day, so you need to include them in your practice.

You mentioned your plan to take 1 CAT PER DAY. That is a BAD idea. CATs are essentially "measuring devices" - they're good at giving you an approximate score and pointing out your "weak spots." Real improvement comes with doing practice problems, review, re-doing past questions using different approaches, etc. Taking a CAT per day is akin to weighing yourself on a scale every day, but not dieting or exercising as much. As a result, your weight (or in this case, your GMAT score) will likely stay the same (+ or - a few points). Another thing to consider is that if you use up 31 practice CATs and DON'T hit your goal score on Test Day, then you'll have wasted a series of valuable resources that won't be as useful if you have to continue studying later.

Your plan should be more "practice heavy" with 1 CAT every week or so.

Once you've taken a FULL-LENGTH CAT, you should report back here with those scores. That data will be far more useful in evaluating your overall readiness to take the GMAT.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich
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by gmat7m » Wed Oct 15, 2014 12:11 pm
Hi Rich.C,

Thanks for you reply. Really appreciate the inputs.
Is this the first practice CAT that you've taken? If not, then what were your other scores (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores) on your other CATs?
Yes it is my first test.
While a 710 is a great score, this result is questionable since you essentially skipped the first hour of the Test. By skipping the first two sections of the CAT, you didn't deal with the endurance/fatigue issues that are a very real part of taking the full GMAT. You'll have to face the Essay and IR on Test Day, so you need to include them in your practice.
I skipped the first two sections because I had given them today evening only. But due to a connection error I had to re-start the test and hence I decided to skip them. It now shows a 6 point score for IR in the earlier test in my account.
You mentioned your plan to take 1 CAT PER DAY. That is a BAD idea. CATs are essentially "measuring devices" - they're good at giving you an approximate score and pointing out your "weak spots." Real improvement comes with doing practice problems, review, re-doing past questions using different approaches, etc. Taking a CAT per day is akin to weighing yourself on a scale every day, but not dieting or exercising as much. As a result, your weight (or in this case, your GMAT score) will likely stay the same (+ or - a few points). Another thing to consider is that if you use up 31 practice CATs and DON'T hit your goal score on Test Day, then you'll have wasted a series of valuable resources that won't be as useful if you have to continue studying later.
Point taken. I think I was trying to do too much. I'll reduce this and focus on the OG and application instead.

Thanks once again for your help.
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by Brent@GMATPrepNow » Wed Oct 15, 2014 12:23 pm
gmat7m wrote:Thanks Brent for your comprehensive reply (I'll begin the video right after this post).

Would be glad if you / anyone else could help me a strategy guide (??) to help chalk out this last one month.

Thanks again!

:)
Your 710 score suggests that you've mastered A LOT of the content that the GMAT tests. So, I don't think you need to go back and review every concept. Instead, it's just a matter of fine-tuning your skills. To achieve this, I suggest that you begin taking regular (FULL-LENGTH) practice tests to identify any remaining area(s) of weakness.

After each test, CAREFULLY analyze the results. While doing so, there are four main types of weakness to watch out for:
1. specific Quant skills/concepts (e.g., algebra, standard deviation, etc.)
2. specific Verbal skills/concepts (e.g., verb tenses, assumption CR questions, etc.)
3. test-taking skills (time management, endurance, anxiety, etc.)
4. silly mistakes

For the first two weaknesses, the fix is pretty straightforward. Learn the concept/skill and find some practice questions to strengthen that weakness. To focus on one topic at a time, you can use BTG's tagging feature to isolate one concept. For example, here are all of the questions tagged as statistics questions: https://www.beatthegmat.com/forums/tags/ ... statistics
See the left side of that linked page for more tag options.

If your test-taking skills are holding you back, then you need to work on these.

Finally, if silly mistakes are hurting your score, then it's important that you identify and CATEGORIZE these mistakes so that, during tests, you can easily spot situations in which you're prone to making errors. I write about this and other strategies in the following article for BTG: https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2012/09/ ... n-the-gmat

I hope that helps.

Cheers,
Brent
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by gmat7m » Wed Oct 15, 2014 12:28 pm
Thanks Brent.

The inputs that you and other people are giving me on my first post already make me realize that BeatTheGMAT is going to give me the final push to a good score (hopefully!)

Thanks a lot again, cheers!

:)
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