How do we know 800 level question has arrived?

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Hi all experts, teachers, consultants:

In exam be it practice or real, How do we know that any question, if attempted right, will confirm 100th percentile? I mean as we know that overall algorthim in GMAT determine the percentile but in general there are only two category of question; simple and difficult then How do we know that particular difficult question is 800 level?

Let's say in RC of verbal I got two paras one is 30 lines and other is 50 lines. The para with 30 line contains the life story of Abraham Lincoln with simple and more generic questions. The para with 50 lines is about NASA scientists working in a specific project with specifc terms and very deep inference related questions. Now in above example we can clearly say that para with 30 line is of medium difficulty and para with 50 lines is of high difficulty. But how do we know that any difficult question is of 690-700 level or 750-760 level or 790-800 level?

Please post the characterstics of 800 level questions.
Source: — GMAT Strategy |

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by DanaJ » Mon Jan 11, 2010 4:44 pm
Just my two cents:

There's no way of knowing in an instant which question is 800-level. This is because difficulty in itself is a highly subjective feature. The GMAT assigns difficulty based on the percentile level that a question gets when it's being tested through the experimental part of the test. To my understanding, there are two ways in which a question is "graded"
- number of people to get it right out of the total sample
- level of people who got it right

I may be wrong about the second one, but I'm pretty sure about the first. Anyway, regardless of how a question is marked "difficult" or "easy", the one thing you should remember is that the way it "appears" to you relates strictly to your background. If you are an astronaut going for the GMAT, the NASA question will probably seem easier for you because you are familiar with the subject matter. However, the MAJORITY of test takers are not astronauts, so that question will obviously seem difficult to them.

Now, I believe that even determining the general level of a question is pretty hard - you can imagine that I personally do not think there's a any way of distinguishing between only 50 points! This is very exact and IMHO there's no way you can do this on the spot.