I just Beat The GMAT!

Hi Guys,

I just registered as I had the same problem. I am not sure what is going on. I am summarizing my test experience. It will be if you all can take a look and see if I am thinking about this the right way. I got a test score of 580 (Q44 V25)

Here is my experience on the GMAT:

Critical Reasoning questions:

The third question I faced (7th overall) in the verbal section was a "Boldface" question type which I believe is considered a high difficulty level question

Throughout the exam I faced mostly weaken and assumption questions in the context of a situation - i.e. where the question poses a situation, plan or purpose

I believe all these questions are advance forms of the regular weaken and strengthen questions on the GMAT
Further I believe I also faced one or two evaluate the argument questions which I believe are a step above the "situation or purpose" related weaken questions

I also faced a "reasoning question" later in the exam on a reading comprehension passage which was similar to a "method of reasoning" question i.e. where in the question asks to identify the logical reasoning provided by the author - again which I presume is a high difficulty question

Sentence Correction questions:

The starting questions seemed to be of basic difficulty with the regular verb-tense and other agreement problems

I faced run on, fragment and multiple error questions later on in the exam which I suppose are again high difficulty level questions

I also faced a question where all of the statement was underlined - I presume it is a high difficulty question again

Reading Comprehension questions:

As stated above under the CR questions category - I got a difficult CR question on the RC
The third passage I received was a long drawn passage with around 5 paragraphs - "Science and Technology" related - I believe that is also a sign of increasing difficulty

The fourth and final passage that I received was a convoluted single paragraph passage - again something I presume signals increasing difficulty

Now what I am thinking is:

How good is the GMATprep an indicator of the actual GMAT and whether the Algorithm on the actual GMAT differs from that on the GMATprep?

Reason I ask this question is because on the GMATprep 1 exam I got a 700 (Q47 V40 - with a penalty for leaving out the last quant. question) and on the GMATprep 2 exam I got a 670 (Q46, V35 with a penalty on both quant. and verbal sections for leaving out the last one question)

Given the type of questions I faced on the verbal section, how does your team or a test expert judge the outcome of my final score?

Reason I ask this question is because I feel I was scoring in the early 40s range on the verbal section
The other thing that comes to my mind is whether the calculation is working fine with the "new research section questions" or not?

It will be great if you guys can take a look and validate my thinking on this issue. I have already written to the GMAT guys, unfortunately they are closed due to thanksgiving and I cannot expect a response from them before Monday. I mean I don't think I was doing that bad to get a score of 580. More so when I was facing difficult questions.

Please advice guys!

Regards,
Moto

Your situation is certainly looks a dilemma.

Most of the people are getting low verbals from V40 to V35----> down to V25 or V22, in these last couple of days.

It may be that they are adding lot of experimental questions in verbal in the closing of the year....or may be in order to test for the new version that they will release in the next year.They also seems to be sending lot of emails in getting reviews of people to facilitate their research.

Whatever the reason, I'm just keeping my fingers crossed, because they will never admit anything done.But it is good that they are being reminded by people with emails.

aslan wrote:Your situation is certainly looks a dilemma.

Most of the people are getting low verbals from V40 to V35----> down to V25 or V22, in these last couple of days.

It may be that they are adding lot of experimental questions in verbal in the closing of the year....or may be in order to test for the new version that they will release in the next year.They also seems to be sending lot of emails in getting reviews of people to facilitate their research.

Whatever the reason, I'm just keeping my fingers crossed, because they will never admit anything done.But it is good that they are being reminded by people with emails.

Hi Aslan,

I still don't understand the reason for such a low score. I mean there has to be a problem with the algorithm/scoring system. It just cannot be that I get a V25 despite facing questions of the likes mentioned above. I seriously now doubt my quant score as well as it shaved off about 10 percentile from my average.

I have written to them, even called but no response on the content issue yet. Pearson vue/Candidate services people came back with a response but then again the response does not answer my questions on the reasoning for such a low score.

Prateek will be great if you could please share the e-mail to which you addressed your questions?

Regards,
Moto

Aslan This is not just you.

It happened to me too when I took my GMAT on 26th October. I got a shocking score on GMAT.My GMAT prep scores ranged from 730-770.MGMAT 1 - 710. Knewton cats - 700,700,730,770. I got a 650 on the real deal,with 32 on verbal.

On all practice CATs except 1 or 2 I score 40+.In a couple of CATs I even score 45+.

I wrote an e-mail to GMAC and got a free retake on 8th December.Lets hope this does not happen to me again.

@rishab1988:(Its not with me but other people who have been given the GMAT lately in the past week or so...I have to take it yet )

Its wonderful to lean that they actually compensated an additional free test for you..way to go!.

Thats also an indicator for others that things may not always be that hunky dory with test conditions, which we generally tend to assume.Sometimes people have to stand up for some things that just seem wrong.

Good luck with your test!

rishab1988,
Do let us know, how do you perform this time.

Good Luck !

The only +ve thing that has kept me going is that GMAC can control the score that I get,but it can't control the knowledge that I acquire.

huh !

Rishabs post actually made me think that how many people would be out there, who were doing good all along in their mocks and suddenly got low scores due to some errors and as a result, deferred applying to some schools of their choice, changing the whole outlook of things to come.

Just goes to show how utterly undependable this test is, in some cases to be taken as a factor for doing MBA!

Dude not just me.one of my friends too got a shocking verbal score.In her last attempt,she got a 44 on verbal.But in second attempt,she got a 34 on verbal.Can GMAC explain that?She took the test on 14th November.

rishab1988:ok..I would be a little hesitant in calling a drop from 40 to 34 or 44 to 34 a big one....thats something which I also experience in verbal as it normally takes one to four questions to deviate between a 86-92 percentile level in verbal.

But to get from V40 or V44 to ---> V22 or V24 basically means that the person was missing on a whole lot of basics (which we had been continuously seeing from the scores of people on this thread).This is something which really get the signals going of something not getting connected.

Rishab,

I am sorry to know about your friend; but as Aslan has mentioned - GMAC curriculum is versatile - its critical to cover and master all the topics; GMAT won't be able to test all the sentence correction concepts in just 17 sentences - but the unpredictable nature of the test makes it worth attempting.

rishab1988 wrote:Dude not just me.one of my friends too got a shocking verbal score.In her last attempt,she got a 44 on verbal.But in second attempt,she got a 34 on verbal.Can GMAC explain that?She took the test on 14th November.

Hi Rishab1988,

Thanks for conforming my doubts. Your post was like a ray of hope when I first saw it. Clearly there is something going on with the exams. More so for the fact that I faced some tough questions. I believe since you have been scoring in the early 40s you would know that the "Bold Face" questions on the GMAT do not hit you utill you are probably 15-16 question in the test or probably even later, as they are generally categorized as above 700 to mid 700 range questions.

Same is the case with the "Method of Reasonging" question type which is extremely rare on the GMAT and pops up less than 5% of the times on the GMAT and this particular type is one of the hardest questions one can face. This question is also more likely to come on the CR section rather than on the RC section. For example on the regular CR it shows up as Person X said ABC and Person Y said EFG and then the question asks what type of reasoning did Y provide in say rebutting X.

Now the question I faced was similar but was rather on the RC. On the 3rd passage "Science and tech" related I got a question where the entire last paragraph was highlighted. The author had given a pov against his/her own argument and then he/she rebut that argument to strengthen the main conclusion of the paragraph. Now the question asked me to line of reasoning employed in the last paragraph in context of the overall paragraph.

Now this is I am talking about when I am on the mid 20s to late 20s section on the Verbal. Further as you would read my earlier post my SC was equally challenging and all these are signs of increasing difficulty.

I have written to GMAC but have not received any information from them till now, mostly because it is thanksgiving this weekend. It will be great if you could please let me know as to where did you send you e-mail and who got back to you. I will try again on Monday. First off I will shoot an e-mail again on Sunday and then I will call them in the evening. Will be great help if you can please share their number/e-mail address with me.

Regards,
Moto2688

I wrote the email to GMAC on 26th October.After couple of weeks passed,I lost hope that they would even reply,but after almost 3 weeks,I received an e-mail from GMAC, which said that they are offering a free retake to me.

I contacted on the e-mail address mention in the Information Bulletin,offered by GMAT. You can access this bulletin on mba.com.

aspire_mba2013 wrote:Rishab,

I am sorry to know about your friend; but as Aslan has mentioned - GMAC curriculum is versatile - its critical to cover and master all the topics; GMAT won't be able to test all the sentence correction concepts in just 17 sentences - but the unpredictable nature of the test makes it worth attempting.

If this is not true - then Ron will not be Ron and Stacey will not be Stacey !!!


I can give you one instance; one day when I was going to school in India, on the way I saw one big buffalo on the road side; the person ahead of me was on a motorcycle and suddenly the buffalo turned its face into the bike, and the guy was crashed right there, he broke some of his bones. ( Well, in a normal scenario no one would imagine, can this happen ? , but yes...this can happen, here because of the size of the buffalo, it seemed like she may be standing far from the road, but a small turn of the face brought the bike down...that's why I think we have to get good in critical reasoning, not just for the sake of scoring good in critical reasoning but even in preparing the game plan for GMAT, Admissions, and Life.

Aslan,

Your reasoning here suggests that the GMAT will throw questions from all difficulty levels at you throughout the exam. The main problem with that assumption is that the GMAT homes in on your score and will only graduate you to the next level once you have cleared the level before. Then if you screw up, it will put you back to last level. So once you are at a 750 level then it starts to throw even harder questions at you. Once you answer that question right, it will then graduate you to probably say another level or will give you another 750 level question. If you do not answer the 750 level question then again it may throw next a 750 level or a slightly easier level question at you. This is a game something similar to a decision tree (which I believe the original scoring system is based - Question 1 - diff 650 - answered correctly? - Yes or No - Yes then move to 680, No then move back to 630 or stay at 650), but more evolved.

Finally the kind of questions being thrown at me were hard. I mean one could argue that they were looking hard to you cos you did not prepare but I could say that hey I got some of the hardest questions thrown at me and that will only be the case if I was doing well. There is no ambiguity.

So I am not sure. If many people are saying there is some discrepancy then there is got to be one.

Regards,
Moto2688