GMAT Premium Online -- Wildly Differing Scores

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Junior | Next Rank: 30 Posts
Posts: 16
Joined: Mon Sep 28, 2009 3:03 pm
Hi, I have recently taken two CATs as part of the premium online program, which in general, has been very helpful. The first time I took the test I received a 640 (62% Quant, 85% Verbal percentile) (26/37 Quant, 35/41 Verbal). The second time I took the CAT, which was today, I received a 750 (99% Quant, 99% Verbal) (30/37 Quant, 30/41 Verbal). Now obviously I am pleased with this score, but I do not understand how there can be such a discrepancy in the scores given I got 5 additional verbal questions wrong versus last time, and still managed to score in the 99th percentile? The only logical reasoning behind this is that the questions were much more difficult than the previous test. My impression is that they were of a similar difficulty. If I break down the two tests by Low/Medium/High difficulty, it is clear that the second test had far more questions characterized as "difficult" and only had 2 "low" questions in total, both in verbal and math. On the other hand, the diagnostic had a whopping 29 total questions considered a "low" level of difficulty. Given I got the first 14 questions right on the verbal section of the diagnostic, this appears to be illogical to me. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks