isn't it "critical" to start off well on the Verba

It is always a good idea to start off strong, if possible. It is also good to be strong in the middle and at the end as well!

You make an interesting point concerning reading comprehension. The only problem is that according to this statement from the official GMAC representative, "The level of difficulty of questions you receive is based on your performance on that same type of question, only. So, your ability to answer high-level sentence correction questions will not affect the difficulty level of critical reasoning questions you receive. I hope that answers your question."

So that means that your Reading Comp question difficulty level is based only on your performance on those questions.

Here is the link to the thread referenced above. https://www.beatthegmat.com/gmat-rc-ques ... 14330.html

I have played with the GMATPrep algorithm for the QUANT section. I guess it's similar for the verbal, although as you said, some questions come in sets there.

My experiments with GMATPrep showed that the scoring algorithm is indeed more sensitive to errors on easy questions, in a row, in the begining vs tough questions, not in a row, at the end of the section.

The reason for that is that the algorithm is basically doing random swings in question difficulty with big amplitude in the begining and smaller amplitudes at the end of the section, trying to zoom on your level. So if you answer wrong a few easy questions in the begining, in a row, it 'decides' it is going to give you easier questions later and it doesn't really drift up in difficulty as you answer those correctly. So it may happen that it totally misses your level, because of a few careless mistakes in the begining. It is less sensitive to mistakes at the end of the section because it already gave you questions corresponding to your level and the question difficulty swings at the end of the section are smaller in amplitude.

The algorithm treats the different types of verbal questions as if they belong to different sections, according to GMAC.

David@VeritasPrep wrote:It is always a good idea to start off strong, if possible. It is also good to be strong in the middle and at the end as well!

You make an interesting point concerning reading comprehension. The only problem is that according to this statement from the official GMAC representative, "The level of difficulty of questions you receive is based on your performance on that same type of question, only. So, your ability to answer high-level sentence correction questions will not affect the difficulty level of critical reasoning questions you receive. I hope that answers your question."

So that means that your Reading Comp question difficulty level is based only on your performance on those questions.

Here is the link to the thread referenced above. https://www.beatthegmat.com/gmat-rc-ques ... 14330.html

Oh ok that clears things up then. I guess you then the first RC passage everyone receives at first is medium difficulty and then based on those 4 questions it increases or decreases the difficulty. so then it places more emphasis on be able to doing Reading comp efficiently and correctly, because it would be a shame to be locked into 4 lower tier RC questions that do little to increase your score, when you near the end of the test.