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Scoretop and the GMAT effect

Let's talk about...whatever!
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by AleksandrM » Thu Aug 07, 2008 9:19 am
A number of people on this forum have said that the test is now more difficult as a result of the whole scoretop fiasco.

I cannot understand why it would affect the difficulty of the test. Can someone explain?

I took my test on 18th of July and did not feel that the test was more difficult than what I saw in practice.
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by caramel3536 » Thu Aug 07, 2008 10:02 am
I took my test yesterday. I had the same feeling about the test as I did previous ones, it just seems that the verbal scoring is now a little off. The verbal was slightly harder, but I knew I was doing well. I've practiced with all the verbal questions the GMAC has ever released to the public and i must say had become very good at verbal over the past few months. I felt confident, only to get a 36.

I don't know what they did, but something's a little strange now. I think we should conduct a survey of how people who've taken the exam before and took it within the past month, felt about the scoring differences.
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by egybs » Thu Aug 07, 2008 10:42 am
One potential explanation is that with the scoretop scandal, gmac might have immediately purged all live questions and replaced them with some that may not have been as fully tested as they usually are. But i'd think that it would just make the test feel a little looser.. not necessarily more difficult.

Besides, I'd assume they build in a buffer for exactly this kind of situation so that if they needed to pull all the live questions early, they wouldn't be left with suboptimally tested questions... but who knows.
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by rhymes_with_luck » Thu Aug 07, 2008 10:45 am

caramel3536 ,
" I've practiced with all the verbal questions the GMAC has ever released to the public " -------- ??? How did you get hold of them :?:
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Question

by bhuiya » Thu Aug 07, 2008 11:11 am
Hello everyone,

I took my gmat on May 25th. The score that I recieved was not expected. I received a Q35/V26/AWA 5.

I was disappointed with Quantitative score but I was very surprised with the verbal section. I did not expect that would happen?

Did anyone reach out to GMAC how scoretop scandal might affect the scoring?

I call 1800 number on the report for a contact info. I e-mailed GMAC about the potential affect but have not heard anything.

Thanks,
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by caramel3536 » Thu Aug 07, 2008 12:27 pm
all the questions that GMAC has released to the public can be found in the official guides, paper tests, powerprep, and GMAT Prep. :!:
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by Mclaughlin » Thu Aug 07, 2008 1:18 pm
well, i did all the verbal questions, both prep tests and both OG guides for verbal (the official and verbal) and teh verbal Qs i got last week on the GMAT were ridiculously hard! I had never in all my studies come across questions of that difficulty AND i didn't do that well in verbal, I think I got a 36. (69%) when I was testing in the 99% on all my practice tests, so something is totally amiss and I feel liek those of use who take the exam now and in the coming weeks are going to suffer a lot compared to those who take it a year from now. It's really unfair and would lvoe someone to talk to GMAC and tell us what the story is.
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by beatthegmat » Thu Aug 07, 2008 1:54 pm
Moving to the Lounge.

I have not seen any official communication from GMAC that the test is now harder due to ScoreTop. I think this is just a rumor.
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by egybs » Thu Aug 07, 2008 5:19 pm
I took it two days ago and didn't find anything noticeably different... particularly on the verbal side.

It doesn't make sense that things would change so dramatically as a result. Maybe you could argue that it would be a touch harder... but not so much so.
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by AleksandrM » Thu Aug 07, 2008 5:25 pm
I felt so as well. I took the GMAT on the 18th of July. I scored a bit lower than I was expecting, but I know that this is because I made some stupid mistakes on the quant section - I was fully aware of at least 3 as soon as I walked out of the test center.

Overall, I thought that the quant and verbal questions were the same as OG and GMATPrep. That is why I was a bit confused by the whole scoretop commentary that I have read about, and though that maybe my test was not yet affected by the changes.
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by egybs » Thu Aug 07, 2008 5:35 pm
nah - more likely that people are looking for excuses on why they didn't do as well as they expected. if everyone did as well as they wanted the mean score wouldn't be around 500.

AleksandrM wrote:I felt so as well. I took the GMAT on the 18th of July. I scored a bit lower than I was expecting, but I know that this is because I made some stupid mistakes on the quant section - I was fully aware of at least 3 as soon as I walked out of the test center.

Overall, I thought that the quant and verbal questions were the same as OG and GMATPrep. That is why I was a bit confused by the whole scoretop commentary that I have read about, and though that maybe my test was not yet affected by the changes.
Last edited by egybs on Thu Aug 07, 2008 6:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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by AleksandrM » Thu Aug 07, 2008 6:20 pm
Yeah, that's what I thought.
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by Mclaughlin » Sat Aug 09, 2008 5:17 pm
egybs wrote:nah - more likely that people are looking for excuses on why they didn't do as well as they expected. if everyone did as well as they wanted the mean score wouldn't be around 500.
Well, that's rather presumptous. I scored well above the mean and I'm not looking for excuses, the verbal was undeniably harder than any of the practice material the GMAC provided. Point blank, period.
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