How GMAT scoring is done?

piyush_nitt wrote:Hi

Today , I gave my first GMAT prep test and scored 650. The break up as follows:

scaled score in quant : 41 (11 incorrect out of 37)
scaled score in verbal : 29 (13 incorrect out of 41)

I would like to know what exactly the scaled score is?
I did 13 incorrect in verbal and 11 incorrect in quant so how come scaled score is 29 and 41 respectively?

Further, I am planning to focus on minimizing the errors and therefore, am planning to SET a limit of maximum number of incorrect answers allowed in each section for myself. Eventually, I will push this limit and try to minimize it.

Say if maximum number of incorrect allowed for Quants is 5 and for verbal is 10. roughly, how much score can I expect if I stick to these limits?

Thanks for help !

First, GMAT is a computer adaptive test. And your points depend on a lot of things. If you get tough questions wrong, then you lose more points. If you get tough questions right, you are awarded more points.

Remember, that there are a few experimental questions thrown in as well. So if you get them right or wrong, it does not affect your score at all.

So it totally depends on what kind of questions you get right or wrong. No one can tell how many you can get wrong on the test, because it is relative

People can score 51 by getting 5-6 wrongs and people can get 47 getting 5-6 wrongs. So it would be useless if you focus on the number of incorrect allowed. You will never know which question you got wrong anyway

Focus on practicing harder and learning concepts by heart. Only that will help you on test day

Hope this helps

Agreed. To elaborate just a bit, try to spend a little more time on the first few questions of the test, since getting those right will mean that you may get to more difficult questions earlier on, which could lead to a higher score.

Also, there's really no way you can tell which questions are experimental or not, so don't try to guess which ones you don't "need" to answer correctly on the test!

Good luck