I just Beat The GMAT!

I see where your coming from fitzgerald23 -- "lets all examine our prep because statistically its more likely that our prep was wrong and our verbal wasn't as strong as it needed to be"

This is BS.

I have consistently scored above a 30 in verbal. I understand it and its easy to me. I decimated all the books, Manhattan, Kaplan, CR Bible. There is absolutely no way I scored a 17v on test day. It just didn't happen. Now if my own performance doesn't raise some questions, then what about the other 4 people in this forum complaining about the same thing. It's not a coincidence. There was an issue with the scoring algorithm on Verbal GMAT in the beginning of April. There is no way that all these people have come onto this forum to talk about it and the explanation is that nobody's prep was up to par.

It's almost insulting that you continue to push that excuse on us.

Even more so, this forum only also shows the people that were willing to talk about it. God knows how many people are confused at their scores, but don't use forums to discuss these matters.

Something happened that didn't relate to my prep or my performance and I want to know what it was. I went from 51% percentile to a 17% after 300+ hours of more studying?? Does that make any sense to anybody?!

I understand that the likelihood of a scoring error is low, but the rate of complaints of April test takers and the dramatic drops in scores they are speaking of is scary and alarming. It's actually even more unlikely that 4 people who scored in 25+ verbal all landed in the 15% percentile with 15q scores because none of them were prepared. The bottom line is that it makes no sense.

I took the test in Somerset, NJ, USA and just by reading these forums its easy to tell that something occurred that drastically dropped the scores of several members of this community. I want an explanation and have been pursuing GMAC for one. If anybody has any tips, let me know.

I think as long as GMAC doesn't disclose the algorithm and they kinda made the GMAT scoring method unsolved mystery and confidential information, any skepticism might be true and to solve this dilemma logically GMAC should have revealed the scoring method long time ago. What if the system counts the experience questions? what if the system miscounting? What if GMAC changed the algorithm to make the counting system so difficult that only the very experienced GMAT test takers could achieve a very high score? Any question could lead to logical conclusion, but as long as the GMAC making it a mystery without a very significant justification. I'm not against or for, but it's a gray area that can't be solved unless GMAC communicate with their clients with much more transparency.

upkarsgrewal wrote:I took the test in Somerset, NJ, USA and just by reading these forums its easy to tell that something occurred that drastically dropped the scores of several members of this community. I want an explanation and have been pursuing GMAC for one. If anybody has any tips, let me know.

I took my test in the beginning of the same week. My exam was on Monday, March 28. There were two other people who were taking their tests at the same test center. One lady and one man. Both of them outscored me in verbal. I can tell you that their standardized test experiences were limited, BUT they scored decent in verbal. Moreover, their English language proficiency levels could be questioned. Now given these two facts - I was not alone at the test center, i.e. network and internet communication protocol problems are out, and the two people outscored me in English part of GMAT exam, I arrive to the following conclusion. I was given the different set/bin of questions which I DID NOT answer correctly and the CAT would penalize me for answering that set of questions wrong.

Let me continue to sort other facts. I was sitting next to the person (deck to deck) who had started his exam 20 minutes earlier than I started mine. It's probable, that I was given the different set/bin of questions to have no chance of assisting myself by other examinee questions-answers. I might have been given the different layer of questions in GMAT data-base to deter my cheating on exam.

I believe CAT has set me back by giving all experimental questions 1-13 in the beginning to allow for the other test taker/user (sitting next to me) to dive into his exam. Thus, all my questions starting from the number 1 and ending somewhere by the number 12 or 13 would be NOT counted. When I decided to speed up taking the test and answer verbal questions quickly I got the medium and high bin questions which were counted by CAT. I got all questions which were counted by CAT from the number 12 or 13 through the question number 41. I have screwed up my verbal because BOTH my best effort and my strategy on GMAT exam failed due to either timing issues (trade-off between correct answers, the order of questions in exam and time left) and experimental, uncounted question blocks. I could have answered the questions from the beginning to middle part of exam correctly, say with 85% accuracy rate, BUT my accuracy might go down and lower as I was approaching towards the end of my verbal section. Having all these in mind, I believe my RC passage questions (at least two RC passages) were the only counted RC entries. Accordingly, CR questions were counted only in the second half of exam.

I have confused myself with the experimental question blocks and put less effort in the second part of my verbal section. CAT DID penalize for this! My failure in verbal part of GMAT could be reasoned with my BAD LUCK for having all experimental questions very early in exam.

Please, note this experimental block hypothesis has been made by me not to purport an idea of change in GMAT CAT algorithm. If this would be the case, other two people have also suffered from the low verbal scores. They did not suffer, hence there was no change in algorithm. This is rather an element of uncertainty in taking GMAT, and I should have known that in advance.

Major take-away: don't think that by answering the early questions correctly and by exerting more vigor or paying attention at the early questions, one's GMAT score can be boosted. This becomes a real myth in my case. Early questions are only early questions and their weights could be shifted in exam at any time.

I took the GMAT april 1st here in Brazil.

My verbal score was exactly the same as my first GMATprep test V37.

I took the GMAT in India (Pune) today.

I read some where that the GMAC/Pearson recycle their question bank every 31 days...that is also the reason why you are not allowed to take consecutive tests within a 31 day period.

So the only explanation I can think of now is that this month's Verbal is particularly tough if not world wide, atleast in Asia and just hope that next month when I will re-write the verbal gods show some mercy on me.

GMAT may not be discussing anything with anyone.

But considering that GMAT was a test that Businss schools look up to and expect GMAC to make sure the test is fair and helps them select candidates, I doubt if GMAT would leave anything to chance.

They must have the data to back up their stand and prove to schools that everything is fine.

Please, note this experimental block hypothesis has been made by me not to purport an idea of change in GMAT CAT algorithm. If this would be the case, other two people have also suffered from the low verbal scores. They did not suffer, hence there was no change in algorithm. This is rather an element of uncertainty in taking GMAT, and I should have known that in advance.

this is an interesting hypothesis. are you suggesting that you scored poorly because all of your initial questions were experimental questions and thus not counted? on what do you base this hypothesis? afaik experimental questions are peppered throughout the exam in every instance, and it is impossible to distinguish them from non-experimental questions. thus i can only conclude that you're basing this hypothesis on absolutely nothing.

to everyone in this thread who has scored (decently) well in practice tests but scored badly on the actual test, it's important to realize that there are many different factors on test day that may be adversely affecting your performance. for example, if you take a practice test under non-normal conditions (e.g. you give yourself too much time to answer questions), your score is likely to suffer on test day when you are forced to abide by the time limit. also, remember that while the gmat recycles its problems, many of the practice exams administered by other companies do not. so if you are scoring a v30 on the gmat prep software after taking the test eight times, you are not really scoring a v30 -- you are likely seeing problems more than once.

Hi Ron,
Good to see you in this thread.
I just want to know one thing, how can one get almost 25 SC's in a test and that all in 700-800 level (at least this is the impression I got). Isn't this illegal?

Also there are more of fill in the blank CR questions these days...no tests (including MGMAT) or forums give so much importance to these questions type of questions. I request you to cover up these topics in detail in the MGMAT guides.

Thanks

Thanks Ron.

But I could not find that link. Could you please help me with that link...I am sure I got around 25 SC's.

Thank you Again.