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Question in regards to the difficulty of the test over time

by bpolley00 » Thu Jan 31, 2013 1:58 pm
Dear GMAT,

I just wanted to know if there is any concern in your organization over the equitableness of the GMAT across different generations of people who take it? Let me be blunt, I have spent the last 4 months studying and I tend to think I am quite intelligent. I have been scoring mid upper 600's on the GMAT prep test. I recently got ahold of a copy of your test from 1998 that you sell online, as my friend had one left over that he didn't need anymore. I scored an 800. I truly doubt that there is any chance I could score an 800 on today's test. Is this a concern for your organization, as the ability to score in the top 10% of the test takers today is much more difficult than prior generations? I mean, if either myself or an older gentleman who has his MBA are both being compared and he has a higher GMAT score, a person may assume, ahh he knew the test more thoroughly than I did; yet, that assumption would be obviously false.

If you could please address my concern, that would be much appreciated.

-BP
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by brianlange77 » Thu Jan 31, 2013 6:03 pm
bpolley00 wrote:Dear GMAT,

I just wanted to know if there is any concern in your organization over the equitableness of the GMAT across different generations of people who take it? Let me be blunt, I have spent the last 4 months studying and I tend to think I am quite intelligent. I have been scoring mid upper 600's on the GMAT prep test. I recently got ahold of a copy of your test from 1998 that you sell online, as my friend had one left over that he didn't need anymore. I scored an 800. I truly doubt that there is any chance I could score an 800 on today's test. Is this a concern for your organization, as the ability to score in the top 10% of the test takers today is much more difficult than prior generations? I mean, if either myself or an older gentleman who has his MBA are both being compared and he has a higher GMAT score, a person may assume, ahh he knew the test more thoroughly than I did; yet, that assumption would be obviously false.

If you could please address my concern, that would be much appreciated.

-BP
B -- I'll jump in with a quick thought/prompt while you are waiting for response to original question. Important to look at not only raw score, but percentile rank as well. Percentile rank creates more relative comparison to all test takers at that time.)

Curious to see official answer here.

Hope studying goes well.

-Brian
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by bpolley00 » Thu Jan 31, 2013 7:41 pm
I think Brian makes a good addition to my original argument. Not only should people hiring different age cohorts of people take into consideration their timing of the test, but also the fact that the relative comparison of test takers has obviously gotten more competitive; thus, a top 10% ranking today would be more impressive than a top 10% ranking 10 years ago (for example).

Perhaps I will add that as a caveat on the bottom of my Resume.

-BP
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by Tommy Wallach » Thu Jan 31, 2013 11:35 pm
Hey bpolley,

Technically, the top 10% remain the top 10% in the eyes of admissions departments. It's really no different as a relative comparison now than then. Sorry! : )

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by kevincanspain » Fri Feb 01, 2013 12:34 am
I have seen more than 100 students of mine do the paper tests you mentioned, and as long as they adhered to the time limits, their scores have been in line with my expectations. I do think, however, that people are spending more time preparing for the GMAT than they spent in the days before the Internet. Did you keep to the time limits? Were all of the questions new to you?
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by bpolley00 » Fri Feb 01, 2013 4:54 am
Kevin,

I kept exactly to the time limit; however, I felt the level of difficulty of the questions were drastically different. Perhaps I am wrong and just was having a good day. I am going to take a gmat prep test tomorrow that I haven't taken yet and we will see how difficult that feels in comparison, I guess.

Lol, thanks Tommy. :)

-BP
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by hutch27 » Sat Feb 02, 2013 9:17 am
Thats an interesting point you brought up. I don't think its true; I think the test is still the same. Maybe the percentile rankings changed tho.
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by bpolley00 » Sat Feb 02, 2013 10:36 pm
Hutch,

If I were you I would buy the old GMAT tests from GMAT and do some of the their practice exams. In my opinion, the difficulty level from that test as compared with the GMATPREP software is SIGNIFICANTLY different. For example, I took the practice one two days ago and scored an 800, missing only three math questions from the 1998 exam. I took a practice GMATPREP today and scored a 660. I would consider that significant. However, that is just my experience thus far.

Still interested to hear from GMAT in regard to this question.
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by Tommy Wallach » Sun Feb 03, 2013 10:44 am
Hey Guys,

My experience is that paper tests do not remotely simulate the real test and its difficulty. An adaptive test is, by definition, harder than a paper test, once you are scoring above a certain level.

Paper Test: A combination of easy, medium, and hard questions.

Adaptive Test for someone who sucks: Lots of easy questions (so easier than the paper test)
Adaptive Test for someone who's decent: Lots of medium questions (so about the same as paper test)
Adaptive Test for someone who's great: Lots of hard questions (so harder than the paper test)

Make sense?

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by brianlange77 » Sun Feb 03, 2013 11:30 am
Tommy Wallach wrote:Hey Guys,

My experience is that paper tests do not remotely simulate the real test and its difficulty. An adaptive test is, by definition, harder than a paper test, once you are scoring above a certain level.

Paper Test: A combination of easy, medium, and hard questions.

Adaptive Test for someone who sucks: Lots of easy questions (so easier than the paper test)
Adaptive Test for someone who's decent: Lots of medium questions (so about the same as paper test)
Adaptive Test for someone who's great: Lots of hard questions (so harder than the paper test)

Make sense?

-t
Tommy brings up a great point -- remember that, simply, if the adaptive test mechanism is doing its job, the test should feel hard for EVERYONE. Because the algorithm will find your 'level' at which you should get about 50% right and 50% wrong. Hence, for everyone, each question feels almost like a coin flip.

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by hutch27 » Mon Feb 04, 2013 11:18 am
Yea I definitely agree with the experts. Theyre probably a few reasons why u did better.. dont get it twisted though an eoghthundred is an eight hundred but I'm sure if u took that w/ an algorithm feeding u harder questions every time the rresults probably would change. I would say that most standardized testing is moving towards computers now too, so it should be interesting to see how that affects scores.
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by brianlange77 » Mon Feb 04, 2013 6:56 pm
hutch27 wrote:Yea I definitely agree with the experts. Theyre probably a few reasons why u did better.. dont get it twisted though an eoghthundred is an eight hundred but I'm sure if u took that w/ an algorithm feeding u harder questions every time the rresults probably would change. I would say that most standardized testing is moving towards computers now too, so it should be interesting to see how that affects scores.
Hutch:

You raise an interesting theory, but to be honest with you, I highly doubt that any of the experts on this board, myself included, got their high scores on a paper exam. I proudly scored a 750, when that was 99th percentile back in 2002 -- and it was CERTAINLY a computer based exam at that time.

Just my $0.02.

-Brian
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by bpolley00 » Mon Feb 04, 2013 7:10 pm
I can tell you right now, if I score an 800 on the actual exam I will jump off the largest building in Omaha, Nebraska, which isn't very large so I should be alright. AKA There is no chance. I will be elated if I score a 700. The test now vs. 1998 is much more difficult; although, I am still waiting for GMAT's response/ conformation of that statement. It will be interesting to hear their response....
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by OfficialGMAT » Thu Feb 07, 2013 10:17 am
Hi, all! Thanks for the interesting discussion. I showed this to our psychometrician team to get their thoughts. GMAT scores are designed to have the same meaning over time. For example, scoring a 600 on a paper test was designed to mean the same level of ability as a score of 600 does today. However, please note that your score would only be valid for five years, so a score of 600 in 1998 would not be valid for use today and we would not release such a score for any use. You would not be compared to someone who took the test in 1998.
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by Tommy Wallach » Thu Feb 07, 2013 1:43 pm
Thanks Rebecca,

It's a very good point. The 5-year limit is fairly explicit: GMAC doesn't believe that test scores remain comparable for more than 5 years at a time. If you simply look at the movement of percentile scores, you can see this in action. A 99th percentile score is a 760 now, but not so long ago, it was more like 720!

-t
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