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Urgent..for All GMAT takers from 1st April till now ..

by anasnet » Fri Apr 08, 2011 4:59 am
Hi ,

I have noticed a lot of people complaining about their GMAT actual test scores recently , specially the verbal part , the common factors that increasing the doubt on the scores are all complains reported from 1st April and specially in the verbal section .

I think there is something totally wrong with the correction method has adversely affected the results .
If we are able to get a ten cases in this forum having same problem we can complain officially to GMAC about it and ask them to revise our answers .

Starting from me :

Test day : 7th Apr
Quant : 31
Verbal : 13
Total : 380

Please post your test results as well to assess this claim .
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by AIM GMAT » Fri Apr 08, 2011 5:24 am
That sounds scary especially for people who have taken tests and got adverse reports and people yet to take the test. anasnet where did u take the test ?
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by RadiumBall » Fri Apr 08, 2011 5:33 am
I doubt if this idea will even take off but here is my vote.

As said earlier I got a pathethic 17. Even in state of sleep I have got scores between 25-30, so this is surely not my score. I have tried MGMAT, GMAT prep, Knewton, Kaplan.

Infact recently I had become more confident on Verbal than on Quant.
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by anasnet » Fri Apr 08, 2011 5:59 am
I have taken the test in Jeddah , Saudi Arabia..

However, people across the world have reported the same issue !
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by bkw » Fri Apr 08, 2011 6:59 am
anasnet wrote: I think there is something totally wrong with the correction method has adversely affected the results .
If we are able to get a ten cases in this forum having same problem we can complain officially to GMAC about it and ask them to revise our answers .
Not to let anyone down, I did in fact score V16 on March 31st which is very surprising because I had V20-30 on my CATs, but I have been in touch with GMAC and they have explicitly said that nothing has changed in their scoring process/algorithm.

So, I think it is waste of energy to believe that things have changed when we get beaten by the GMAT although it might be the first thing you think of.
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by upkarsgrewal » Fri Apr 08, 2011 2:15 pm
Umm -- this is amazing. I took my test Tuesday April 7th and felt I scored MUCH higher in the Verbal. I received a 400 (q30v17). I never ever scored that low. My verbal was consistently 32+

The fact that even a few people are complaining about it leads be to believe that something was very very wrong. I was in the 12% -- and I consistently scored in 60% + in all practice tests and first test???

Read my story -- something is going on here and I thank OP for bringing this up.

https://gmatclub.com/forum/3-months-of-s ... 11995.html

What should we do?? Contact GMAC?
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by anasnet » Fri Apr 08, 2011 2:19 pm
I have contacted GMAC today at this number and they have opened a case to review my test scores .

Please do the same , we need to show high number of cases for same issue to make them take serious action .

GMAC EMEA : +44 (0) 161 855 7219
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by bkw » Fri Apr 08, 2011 2:28 pm
anasnet wrote: Please do the same , we need to show high number of cases for same issue to make them take serious action .
The first thing you think of when you score poorly (as I did a week ago) is that their algorithm is wrong. But this is false. I have spoken to GMAC in US today concerning this, and nothing, nada, zero, inget has changed in their scoring procedure/algorithm.

I got this e-mail back concerning my scoring:
"We have reviewed your concern and have checked your exam logs. Each exam goes through a three-step scoring process using different algorithms and is scored at different locations. In order for a score to become reportable, all three of these methods must match 100%. The scores that you received on both your unofficial and official score reports are accurate and contain no errors. We cannot provide a report to you of which questions you got wrong, as this would violate the security and integrity of the GMAT. You can however submit what is called an item challenge if you believe that a certain question was presented incorrectly, or did not have an appropriate answer to choose from."

Analyze your prep, not the algorithm.
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by fitzgerald23 » Fri Apr 08, 2011 4:09 pm
BKW is right. You have to analyze what you did wrong in your prep rather than just assuming there is some mass conspiracy by the GMAT folks. I think something that is going on here is over reliance on CAT exams as a gauge of what you should score. While the CAT exams that are available to you might give you a range of possibilities they are not a guarantee of anything. You have to realize that the CAT exams are designed to prepare you for the style of exam and the stamina needed for the exams. Beyond that they should only be used to measure your progress as you learn the material.

Learning a CAT, which I think is what some people do, is not really beneficial. I can only speak of the Manhattan tests for the most part and I think they do an awesome job of being representative of the GMAT, but if I had simply taken 6 of their exams, then retook them againand only focused on practice questions from them I could probably have scored close to perfect in it and then gone out and scored a 500 on the real thing. The companies all focus on different things and different ways to reach the answers. But that can be a problem as well. Its very easy to read Number Properties take a few practice tests and test bank questions, and start to simply recognize the question pattern from Manhattan and how to quickly choose the approach to solve the question. The GMAT may have something written in a totally different manner and on test day you might not realize what they are asking if you are simply focusing too much on those practice exams rather than why a question is right or wrong and then seeing if you can use the information to solve other types of questions from other sources.

You have to reinforce those tests by seeing how you do with the OG questions, which are the closest thing you will get to the real exam. They may not be the hardest of questions, but its more beneficial than taking a bunch of practice exams, reading an answer on a forum and working backwards from it before trying it on your own, or downloading hard questions and believing that working on those means you can now answer everything. Id bet that many of the people on this forum who do the best are the ones who ask questions to the experts and ask others for advice on how to approach question types. They want to learn how to solve the question. Thats how you beat the GMAT.
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by RadiumBall » Fri Apr 08, 2011 5:19 pm
fitzgerald23: Nothing against you, but I know that you got a wonderful score in your GMAT so you want to talk of everything good about the GMAT. If I had got my desired score I too would writing against the OP...

But can you please explain how one could get 25 SC's and that too all real tough ones...Ok I am not a native speaker but I am so dumb too...Even on the toughest SC set (like the Brutal SC) I would get at worst 50% wrong...yes may be I got 50% SC wrong on the GMAT...so what does this show?

Isn't the GMAT supposed to be mixture of easy and tough questions?
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by fitzgerald23 » Fri Apr 08, 2011 7:17 pm
RadiumBall wrote:fitzgerald23: Nothing against you, but I know that you got a wonderful score in your GMAT so you want to talk of everything good about the GMAT. If I had got my desired score I too would writing against the OP...

But can you please explain how one could get 25 SC's and that too all real tough ones...Ok I am not a native speaker but I am so dumb too...Even on the toughest SC set (like the Brutal SC) I would get at worst 50% wrong...yes may be I got 50% SC wrong on the GMAT...so what does this show?

Isn't the GMAT supposed to be mixture of easy and tough questions?
Its my understanding that the GMAT is not really a mix of easy and tough questions. Its a mix of questions in which the difficulty is determined by how you are performing on the test. for example if you start off the test with 5 in a row correct, question number 6 is going to be far harder than the person who gets 1 correct, 2 wrong, 1 correct, and 1 wrong, and that person will have a much harder question than someone who gets 5 in a row incorrect.

My point in my post is that the study approach that I believe you are using bsed on your reply- going over the brutal SC type questions- does not mean that you are learning the basics of answering the easy questions. If you dont get the easy ones right on the test you will never see the hard ones. I think the very tough questions take some extra time and a very analytical approach to solve. If you do that same approach on an easy one you may actually get it wrong by looking for things such as indicating words, that dont exist in those questions but almost always exist in the tough ones. you can end up overthinking an easy one nd getting it wrong simply because you think its a tough question.

I guess I would look at it like this. Anyone can pick up a guitar and get a tab to a very hard song and work on part of that song for a really long time and eventually make it sound decent. That doesnt mean that if you give the person a tab for a very basic song that they can play it. They trained their hands to play something very specific. Just because they learned the hard one doesnt mean they can play something 100 times easier. They never really learned to play the guitar in the first place. They just learned a song.

If I had a poor showing on the test and I know for a fact I can do better I would go back to square 1, study from one of the prep guides and then go through all the OG questions before going to anything else. Unless you can answer at least 80% of those OG questions you will have a tough time scoring highly. From my brief experience with the GMAT Prep you need to be near perfect in verbal to get above a 40 and pretty good to be above a 30. It does not seem to be anywhere near as forgiving as the quant when it comes to wrong answers.
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by Night reader » Fri Apr 08, 2011 8:09 pm
fitzgerald23 wrote:From my brief experience with the GMAT Prep you need to be near perfect in verbal to get above a 40 and pretty good to be above a 30.
Disagree, as the note above has put a qualification on the verbal skills measured by GMAT within the score diapason 30+. The statement lacks evidence or the evidence has not been disclosed.

Counter argument, I have the documented fact of a man who took two non-degree courses at our school; he scored below 20 in three sections of TOEFL ibt and scored only 6.0 in IELTS after having achieved the score of 33 in verbal section of the GMAT exam.

p.s. I am very disappointed with the lightness of judgment and analysis made by GMAT high scorers like fitzgerald. Although, I am not presuming GMAT exam score as a sign of intelligence level, it still has some links with people's thinking abilities.
Last edited by Night reader on Fri Apr 08, 2011 8:14 pm, edited 2 times in total.
My knowledge frontiers came to evolve the GMATPill's methods - the credited study means to boost the Verbal competence. I really like their videos, especially for RC, CR and SC. You do check their study methods at https://www.gmatpill.com
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by RadiumBall » Fri Apr 08, 2011 8:12 pm
That is a great reply fitzgerald23 but I am not convinced...If I can consistently score between 20-30 (which is actually a huge margin) in preps...I see no reason for a 17...and how do you explain the 25 odd SC's that I got...

And what do you mean here "It does not seem to be anywhere near as forgiving as the quant when it comes to wrong answers." Do you mean that Verbal is much tougher than Quant in scoring terms?
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by Night reader » Fri Apr 08, 2011 8:24 pm
fitzgerald23 wrote:Anyone can pick up a guitar and get a tab to a very hard song and work on part of that song for a really long time and eventually make it sound decent. That doesnt mean that if you give the person a tab for a very basic song that they can play it. They trained their hands to play something very specific. Just because they learned the hard one doesnt mean they can play something 100 times easier. They never really learned to play the guitar in the first place. They just learned a song.
what's this? sound decent - what would be decent in your interpretation? The song cannot sound decent without effort and learning put in the first place. I guess no one who targets high scores, at this forum, does approach the content of GMAT exam mechanically or keeps practicing CATs without paying attention to the core subject(s). I didn't do that way and I guess RadiumBall has not done so, otherwise I would recognize that trend from his earlier posts.
My knowledge frontiers came to evolve the GMATPill's methods - the credited study means to boost the Verbal competence. I really like their videos, especially for RC, CR and SC. You do check their study methods at https://www.gmatpill.com
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by fitzgerald23 » Sat Apr 09, 2011 6:46 am
RadiumBall wrote:That is a great reply fitzgerald23 but I am not convinced...If I can consistently score between 20-30 (which is actually a huge margin) in preps...I see no reason for a 17...and how do you explain the 25 odd SC's that I got...

And what do you mean here "It does not seem to be anywhere near as forgiving as the quant when it comes to wrong answers." Do you mean that Verbal is much tougher than Quant in scoring terms?
Most of the test companies will tell you that there is a swing of +- a certain amount of points based on practice tests and the actual thing. If you are scoring between a 20 and 30 and not testing under ideal conditions in practice and just happened to have a bad day on test day a 17 is not that far from the 20.

And that is definitely what I mean about the scoring. I would remember on the GMAT Prep looking at what I got right and wrong and I would score between a 47 and 49 in Quant with multiple wrong answers. I cant remember how many but Id say it was definitely double digits. Then I would take verbal and get 5 or 6 wrong and end up with a 41. My assumption was that the test itself is much more intuitive towards quant question selection than in verbal which seems a bit more static and that is reflected in how many you can get incorrect and still score highly.

What I would do if I were you is to reinstall your GMAT Prep software (there are instructions online as to how to do that and ensure new question banks) and try to carve out some time on a day off to best mimic the actual test. Go to a public area like a library with a laptop around the time you would sit for the GMAT. This was you get the distracting noises you would normally get at a test center. Start with the AWA and then take the actual test and see how you do. I think that will give you a better idea of where you really stand and if maybe there could have been a real mistake in your scoring.
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