Ask the Test Maker

I just took my 4th GMATPrep test and got a 790. Sounds good, but... I got a perfect 51 on Quant and 51 on Verbal. Shouldn't that be an 800?? (Don't get me wrong, I'm not whining about the score - I'm only aiming for a 750, and obviously business schools don't care about 790 v. 800. And I had seen a few questions before, so I know that it's not a totally accurate reflection).

But anyway - I'm just really confused about how the scoring works with raw score v. overall! If I got perfect raw scores, how is that not a perfect overall score? Can someone explain how the scoring REALLY works??

As for the breakdown:
Q - 36/37 right, only 1 wrong
V - 41/41 right

So does the raw score not matter - like are all 51's not the same? Do you have to get EVERY question right to get an 800?

For the record, I'm really aiming for a 48 Q / 45 V or higher. But I'm worried that that would sometimes be a 750 and sometimes a 740 or even lower. How do we make sense of this scoring algorithm??

Your actual raw score is a bit more fine-grained than the integer value you receive. In other words, you're right that not all 51's are identical. See here: https://www.veritasprep.com/blog/2011/10 ... gine-work/

But what a problem to have!