710 - Q49 V40 - How accurate is the unofficial score.

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The scenario:
Took the GMAT on 7th Wednesday scored a 40 in Verbal and 49 in quant. Overall 710
My friend took the GMAT on 5th scored a 40 in verbal and 48 in quant. Overall 720
Another friend took the GMAT approx 10 days before i took, he got a quant 49 and 35, Overall 700

www.800score.com/score2.html ---- check this link out - On entering my quant and verbal scores i get a overall 730 (similar with other charts i checked out)

So, while i have a score split higher than my friend has i have a lower GMAT score, while i have 5 marks more in verbal i have just 10 marks more than my another friend has. How accurate are the unofficial scores? Any chance of getting 730? I have a 95% above accuracy in verbal, getting a 710 is a little disappointing.
Last edited by coderversion1 on Sun Nov 11, 2012 6:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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by gmatwar13 » Sun Nov 11, 2012 12:01 am
can't realy say how gmat internally evaluates things... Q49 can be anything between Q48.5 and Q49.4.. similarly V40 can be anything between V39.5 and V40.4... But anyway these are only predictions... Score seems to be on lower side. It is very rare that final score turns out to be on higer side, but chances are there. Don't feel disheartened your score is good and still you have good chance to get into schools you want.. Don't let this pessimism spoil your apps...

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by AbhiJ » Sun Nov 11, 2012 2:13 am
Max possible value of (Q48 V40) = 88.999999 = 89
Min possible value of (Q49 V40) = 88.000001 = 88
So mathematically speaking its possible for your score to be lower than our friends score 720.
Did our friend gave the exam in November ?

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by ugur19 » Sun Nov 11, 2012 9:58 am
I think it is normal since your score is calculated by an algorithm that measures number of your right answers, difficulty of them and which questions you got wrong. They say that earlier questions affect your score more so it could explain the difference you find little

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by gmatninja » Sun Nov 11, 2012 3:07 pm
First of all, congratulations! I can see from your profile that you really wanted a 740, but a 49/40/710 is still a fantastic score. Be proud.

As others have already mentioned here, the GMAT scoring system involves quite a bit of rounding. Also, the algorithm for combining your quant and verbal scores is not linear... so very strange things can happen with your composite score, and the score calculators available online won't be able to account for every possible score outcome.

Is it unusual that a 49Q/40V only gave you a 710? Sure. But if you think about it as a 48.5 and a 39.5, it suddenly doesn't seem quite so strange. It can't hurt to give GMAC a call, but I would be very surprised if they were able to change your composite score. Let us know if they tell you anything interesting, though!
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