mpb wrote:I've taken two Kaplan CATs, and received a 690 on both, but the correlation between the raw scores and the percentiles for verbal seem to be very different. Can you please explain how the percentiles are pretty close for the two verbal scores that have very different raw scores? The scores are as follows:

Test 1:
Quant: 46 77%
Verbal: 42 95%
Overall: 690 88%

Test 2:
Quant: 40 59%
Verbal: 54 99%
Overall: 690 88%

Thank you.

Hi!

The reason that the two verbal percentiles are so close is because most people perform more poorly on the verbal section than the math section. As a result, a scaled verbal score of 42 already puts you ahead of 95% of the people who write the GMAT.

Since 42 is the 95th percentile, there's only so much higher you can go from there (after all, you can't possible score better than 100% or more of test takers). A 54 is likely the 99.9th percentile, but the system only shows increments of 1%.

Also, just to make sure you understand the scoring system, 95% doesn't mean you got 95% of the questions right; it's the 95th percentile, not 95 percent. Percentile rankings show how you did compared to other test takers, not what percent of the questions you answered correctly.

Since the GMAT is a computer adaptive test, your score isn't based solely on how many questions you get right (level of difficulty of questions is the other big factor). For example, someone who gets the first 5 questions right and then alternates right/wrong for the rest of the test would have a similar % correct as someone who gets the first 5 questions wrong and then alternates right/wrong for the rest of the test - however, their scores would be markedly different.