Fluke iln GMATPrep algorithm?

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!!

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?

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

Brent -

Thanks for supplying the info!

Very interesting experiment...

David

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)