Scoring Mechanism on GMAT

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srinivasapriyan.r: Junior | Next Rank: 30 Posts; Posts: 18; Joined: Sat May 04, 2013 9:49 am

by srinivasapriyan.r » Tue Oct 01, 2013 3:58 am

Hello Everyone!

I took the GMAT Prep Test - 1 and scored a 610(Q47,V28).

I'm planning to take the GMAT in a month, and want to improve on Verbal(looking to get a raw score of 40+).

Few queries regarding the scoring mechanism.

Of the 37 questions in Quant, I got 17 questions incorrect(not kidding) and finished with a raw score of 47.

Of the 41 questions in Verbal, I got 16 questions incorrect but finished with a raw score of only 28.

In both the sections i got the last 6-7 questions as incorrect(lack of time management).

And the rest of the incorrect questions were scattered throughout.

One weakness - timing, which i'm working on improving.

Now,
- how did i get 47 on quant even after getting almost half of the questions as incorrect?
- how can i get 2 more points(49+) in quant?
- why is there a huge variation in the raw score between Q&V, though the number of incorrect questions, and pattern and frequency of incorrect questions were almost similar?
- how do i improve on verbal?

Thanks a lot in advance for your expertise inputs!

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Source: Beat The GMAT — GMAT Strategy | Tue Oct 01, 2013 3:58 am

Brian@VeritasPrep: GMAT Instructor; Posts: 1031; Joined: Thu Jul 03, 2008 1:23 pmFollowed by: 255 members; Location: Malibu, CA; Thanked: 716 times; GMAT Score:750

by Brian@VeritasPrep » Tue Oct 01, 2013 8:49 am

Good questions - and you're right to even title the post "scoring mechanism" because it all has to do with that. A quick executive summary:

-The GMAT is an adaptive test, meaning that it serves questions to you (and scores those questions) adaptively based on its perception of your ability level thus far on that section.

-So, in essence, if you've already demonstrated to the computer that you're well above average, it won't "waste" question slots asking you really easy questions that you should get right. It will instead seek an answer to "how far above average are you?" and therefore serve you more difficult questions trying to assess that. So it's not at all uncommon for high scorers to miss nearly half of their questions, as the test isn't lobbing you softballs...it's always trying to determine your upper threshold.

-On the flip side, if you've struggled thus far on the test the test will be serving you lower-difficulty questions.

-And that's a crude demo - it's certainly a little more nuanced than that, as the blog posts below will explain in a little more detail.

-Then for the scaled score / percentile discrepancies, that's all based on how the pool of test takers does. Particularly since the scale tipped to now well more than 50% of GMATs taken coming from outside of the US, in countries where quant skills are high but English is often a second language, and that shifts the percentiles to having a higher percentage of people score very high on the quant and a little lower on the verbal. Keep in mind that schools are very aware of these trends, so they'll look at the individual scores/percentiles as well as the overall.

Anyway, that's a quick explanation for what you observed. If you want to read a little more about "Item Response Theory" and the GMAT scoring algorithm, check out the links below:

https://www.veritasprep.com/blog/2010/08 ... algorithm/
https://www.veritasprep.com/blog/2013/07 ... ice-tests/
https://www.veritasprep.com/blog/2013/07 ... ptability/
https://poetsandquants.com/2013/07/21/th ... t-scoring/

Brian Galvin
GMAT Instructor
Chief Academic Officer
Veritas Prep

Looking for GMAT practice questions? Try out the Veritas Prep Question Bank. Learn More.

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GMAT/MBA Expert

Brent@GMATPrepNow: GMAT Instructor; Posts: 16207; Joined: Mon Dec 08, 2008 6:26 pmFollowed by: 1268 members; Location: Vancouver, BC; Thanked: 5254 times; GMAT Score:770

by Brent@GMATPrepNow » Tue Oct 01, 2013 9:53 am

As Brian already stated, your scores are not based on how many questions you answer correctly; they're based on the level of difficulty of the questions you answer correctly.

To illustrate this, I'll share an experiment I performed.

I took GMATPrep Practice Test #1 four times, and each time I answered every second question correctly (I did this for the quant section only). Given that I correctly answered exactly half of the questions each time, you'd expect my quant scores to be roughly the same for all 4 tests.

My 4 scaled scores were: 19, 23, 26 and 42

This represents a percentile range from approximately 8th percentile to the 63rd percentile. If you're interested, we have a free video explaining the GMAT scoring algorithm: https://www.gmatprepnow.com/module/gener ... es?id=1251

In both the sections i got the last 6-7 questions as incorrect(lack of time management).

I suggest that you use a Milestone Chart to keep you on track. This is covered in our free GMAT time management video at https://www.gmatprepnow.com/module/gener ... es?id=1244

Cheers,
Brent

Brent Hanneson - Creator of GMATPrepNow.com

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