CAT question: adapting to different verbal question types

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jasonc: Master | Next Rank: 500 Posts; Posts: 127; Joined: Sat Apr 19, 2008 1:02 am; Thanked: 12 times

by jasonc » Thu May 29, 2008 10:58 am

How does the GMAT take the different question types into account when adjusting difficulty level (and scoring)?

For my case, in each of my practice tests I've only gotten 1 non SC question wrong, and ~8-11 SC questions wrong. (raw score 41 on practice GMATs and 42 on the actual)

I basically only studied SC as prep for the GMAT, but only improved my raw score by 1, and still missed 8 of the 15 SC questions I received (vs 9/10 out of 14 on the 2 practice tests).

Is my high RC & CR abilities (relative to my SC abilities) causing me to get harder SC questions? Or are the question types treated separately by the CAT?

Source: Beat The GMAT — GMAT Strategy | Thu May 29, 2008 10:58 am

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beatthegmat: Site Admin; Posts: 6778; Joined: Mon Feb 13, 2006 8:30 amFollowed by: 994 members; Location: Los Angeles, CA; Thanked: 1249 times

by beatthegmat » Fri May 30, 2008 3:03 pm

Hey Jason:

I've been studying the GMAT for the last three years, yet I can't definitely tell you have the algorithm works. In fact, hardly anyone outside of GMAC can explain with perfect accuracy how the CAT adapts its score/difficulty. For practical purposes, it's best to think of the test as a black box.

The only important thing to take away is that as you keep getting questions correct on the GMAT, you'll see more difficult questions that are worth 'more' to your final GMAT score.

Take some time to dig through the archives of this site, using the Google search on the top right. You'll find plenty of posts that address parts of your questions, like this one.

Good luck!

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jasonc: Master | Next Rank: 500 Posts; Posts: 127; Joined: Sat Apr 19, 2008 1:02 am; Thanked: 12 times

by jasonc » Fri May 30, 2008 7:22 pm

thanks~

maybe I'll play around with gmatprep and record/post the SC questions so we can guess at the difficulty level of them and see if they're harder than average heh.

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