score vs. percentile vs. correct/incorrect

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ccassel: Master | Next Rank: 500 Posts; Posts: 118; Joined: Wed Mar 16, 2011 1:44 pmFollowed by: 2 members; Location: Canada; GMAT Score:530

by ccassel » Tue Jun 14, 2011 1:12 pm

Hi all,

I am sure a lot of you have reached this juncture in your studying so I will ask for your advice!

What study strategy would you take if you are scoring high 40's in the Quant but only getting 60% of the questions correct on the GMAT Preptest Software?

Should I be focusing on content, timing, or should I be content with the way GMAC calculates the score? Also, will it be calculated in the same manner on test day?

Cheers,

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Source: Beat The GMAT — GMAT Strategy | Tue Jun 14, 2011 1:12 pm

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 Jun 14, 2011 1:51 pm

Don't worry about the percentage of questions you answered correctly on the GMATPrep tests. The number of questions you answer correctly/incorrectly has little to do with your score. What matters is the difficulty level of the questions you answer correctly/incorrectly.

Here's a little story to illustrate this point:
When I was writing the article Taking the GMATPrep Practice Tests Multiple Times (https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/03/ ... iple-times), 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 (I'm fairly confident that you'd get the same results on the verbal side)

So, it's not about how many questions you answer correctly/incorrectly; it's about the level of difficulty of the questions you answer correctly/incorrectly.

So, my advice is to just focus on your final scores.

I hope that helps.

Cheers,
Brent

Brent Hanneson - Creator of GMATPrepNow.com

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ccassel: Master | Next Rank: 500 Posts; Posts: 118; Joined: Wed Mar 16, 2011 1:44 pmFollowed by: 2 members; Location: Canada; GMAT Score:530

by ccassel » Tue Jun 14, 2011 2:03 pm

Thanks for the tips Brent!

Cheers,

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