Fluke iln GMATPrep algorithm?

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mhonster: Newbie | Next Rank: 10 Posts; Posts: 9; Joined: Tue Mar 30, 2010 11:59 pm; Location: Philippines

by mhonster » Sun May 15, 2011 5:43 am

Hi guys,

Has anyone gotten a higher quant score than verbal but making much more mistakes in quant than in verbal during his/her practice tests using the GmatPrep software?

I got 37 in quant but making 19 mistakes while getting 30 in verbal but making only 14 mistakes. Is there a catch here?

Appreciate your thoughts, thanks

mhonster

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Source: Beat The GMAT — GMAT Strategy | Sun May 15, 2011 5:43 am

David@VeritasPrep: GMAT Instructor; Posts: 2193; Joined: Mon Feb 22, 2010 6:30 pmFollowed by: 512 members; Location: Vermont and Boston, MA; Thanked: 1186 times; GMAT Score:770

by David@VeritasPrep » Sun May 15, 2011 6:34 am

I have responded to a similar question recently, I think that the GMATPrep needs to be clearer about what scaled scores mean.

Your 37 on Quant is about the 48th percentile - meaning you are above 48 percent of people and below 51 or 52 percent.

Your Verbal score of 30 is about the 55th percentile - so you were above 55 percent of people.

So you actually did a little better on the verbal.

But even that is not the whole story...your score depends on more than just the number of questions that you get right. I read a posting of someone who had intentionally gotten every other question right and every other one wrong over the course of several different GMATPrep test attempts - so he got 1,3,5,7, etc. right and intentionally got 2,4,6,8, etc. wrong. Doing this over several test attempts with the same GMATPrep test he got scores that differed by more than 100 points -- despite getting the same number of questions right and wrong each time.

So you cannot just count the ones you get right and wrong -- the difficulty of the questions also matters.

Hope that you helps!!

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mhonster: Newbie | Next Rank: 10 Posts; Posts: 9; Joined: Tue Mar 30, 2010 11:59 pm; Location: Philippines

by mhonster » Sun May 15, 2011 8:46 am

Hi David,

Thanks for your quick reply. So am I correct in saying that it's not the number or quantity of right answers that makes a good score but the quality of the correctly answered questions? I think I read in a post here that someone wasn't able to finish the test or guessed on the last 7 quant questions but got a very high score - a 47.

By the way, I'm also in the process of getting my timing right and doing some more practice tests. In this regard, do you advise to aim to correctly answer at least 4 straight questions in order to "maintain" my score in the high averages throughout and thus get a high score in the end? Does the algorithm work this way?

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David@VeritasPrep: GMAT Instructor; Posts: 2193; Joined: Mon Feb 22, 2010 6:30 pmFollowed by: 512 members; Location: Vermont and Boston, MA; Thanked: 1186 times; GMAT Score:770

by David@VeritasPrep » Sun May 15, 2011 12:02 pm

I would say that it is both the number of questions and the "quality" or difficulty of questions. You do need to get some questions right in order to get a good score but as I mentioned the test is designed in such a way that you will miss questions.

As to getting four questions in a row - I am all for it, but only if that happens naturally as you are taking the test. In other words, if you have three in a row I would not spend five minutes trying to get the fourth one.

Here are a couple of articles on the timing and strategy. One is at this link and one is attached.

https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2011/01/ ... n-the-gmat

Attachments

Quant_timing_on_the_GMAT.doc: Quant timing on the GMAT; (30.5 KiB) Downloaded 103 times

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Brent@GMATPrepNow: GMAT Instructor; Posts: 16207; Joined: Mon Dec 08, 2008 6:26 pmFollowed by: 1268 members; Location: Vancouver, BC; Thanked: 5254 times; GMAT Score:770

by Brent@GMATPrepNow » Sun May 15, 2011 12:27 pm

I thought it might be useful to throw out some concrete numbers to add to support Brian's comments.

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, it's not about how many questions you answer correctly; it's about the level of difficulty of the questions you answer correctly.

Cheers,
Brent

Brent Hanneson - Creator of GMATPrepNow.com

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David@VeritasPrep: GMAT Instructor; Posts: 2193; Joined: Mon Feb 22, 2010 6:30 pmFollowed by: 512 members; Location: Vermont and Boston, MA; Thanked: 1186 times; GMAT Score:770

by David@VeritasPrep » Sun May 15, 2011 5:39 pm

Brent -

Thanks for supplying the info!

Very interesting experiment...

David

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mhonster: Newbie | Next Rank: 10 Posts; Posts: 9; Joined: Tue Mar 30, 2010 11:59 pm; Location: Philippines

by mhonster » Sun May 15, 2011 8:10 pm

Hi Brent and David,

Thank you both for your insights and excellent advice. Your answers will definitely help me strategize better for the test.

Kind regards,

Nico (my real name)

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