born of a broken man

[cubicle_bound_misfit]

gmatprep 1: 580
gmatprep 2: 680
gmatprep 1(1): 710
gmatprep 2(1): 700
gmatprep1(2): 700
gmatprep1(3); 750(many repeatss in verbal)
gmatprep2(2):740 (many repeats in Verbal)

How low can the score go from here ?

here , for tonight's entertainment :

640(Q 48, V 29) !!!

All I aimed for is a 15-20 range good school but being an Indian IT male, that dream is gone forever.
For all the future test takers,
GMAT math has gone tough not content wise but lengthwise, you have to do more calculation in a short time...people are blaming scoretop scam for this.
Verbal : Do I even qualify to comment?

Only funny thing is , I missed my last QA question, still ended up with 48 even after penalty etc.

in verbal I finished with 4-5 mins to go, and here is the result.

This is my last post in this community. I would like to thank Ian , Ron and most of all Eric.

Thanks and Regards,

[3gmater]

Hi Cubicle bound misfit.

I have an identical score as you do (however this was my 3rd attempt).
The problem I faced in verbal was .....getting monstorous RC's with 3-4 line questions that sallowed my time. Inspite of this I still expected a decent V-score but in the end the V-section made a joke of me once again.

Q-section was not too bad, except that I was doing bad in regard to timing, otherwise the all the questions were answerable.

Do you plan to re-take? Was this your first attempt?
I sincerely feel that the difficulty level of Questions in both the sections have gone up by a notch. I would not be surprised if the average GMAT score takes a dip in coming months.

In any case good luck with...whatever decision you make.

rgds,

-3G

[gileyal]

My man - don't lose hope.

It seems to me like you could easily get a better score if you were able to shave of your quantative time. You mentioned you do a lot of calculations. I haven't taken the real exam yet but I have to tell you - if you are spending your time looking for the algebraic solution, this could be your problem.

A lot of questions have shortcuts. If you got a 48 without using these shortcuts I am sure you are capable of learning the shortcuts and getting a higher score. You shouldn't lose hope!

[ngufo]

A bunch of people in the forum have managed to get into the top schools with a lower score on GMAT. If your essays are killer, then the GMAT constitutes a smaller weight age in the selection process I believe.

I really think you have what it takes - don't let this take you down buddy ....I would say - do check if you can get into the school of your choice with score you have, next may be you want to give this baby one more shot? This might make all the difference ...

On a side note, do watch this video by Randy Pausch, it got me so upbeat, that I was able to put all my fears, and unhappiness aside, and focus on what needs to be done - I see it whenever I need to be inspired. .....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teoB65BlGis

All the best,
-ngufo

[airan]

Hey Cubicle Bound Misfit,
Atlast someone shares my opinion ..Maths has gone tough ..and Verbal scoring is also little difficult to understand ..
For me, verbal went fine .. and i was quite confident..finished it much before the time ..and score was 36 ..it was a shocker ..

Scoretop scam has definitly contributed to all this fiasco .... But it is good for all the students ..

As i said before ..dont go by score only ..u can give it one more try ..and add may be 50-60 points ..

[medea66]

Hi guys,

I'm actually considering re-taking after a miserable defeat in May. I must admit, my score was more than 100pts lower than GmatPrep. Now with the the Scoretop controversy, its probably even more difficult. How much more difficult do you guys think the test has become since?

I think this is discouraging to the students that are re-attempting the test.

[Tarmac]

More difficult due to the Scoretop controversy?

If anything, it has gotten easier. An identical performance might even net you 10 more points now compared to when there are a hundred scoretoppers taking the test with you.

[m5enigma]

What do you mean with this scoretoppers thing?

i know the site scoretop.com.
but whats the issue?

[Ian Stewart]

ScoreTop was a website that distributed 'live' GMAT questions (real questions from the current GMAT test pool) and encouraged its members to post such questions to its forums. These activities (disclosing live questions, enticing others to do so, and viewing live questions) are all violations of agreements test-takers enter into when registering for and when taking their GMAT. In addition, these activities are violations of copyright. GMAC recently won a $2.3 million judgment against ScoreTop for multiple copyright infringements (their claim for tortious interference was deemed duplicative). GMAC was also awarded the scoretop domain, and ScoreTop's PayPal account records of roughly 6000 subscribers, and is now threatening to cancel the scores of those it can demonstrate knowingly cheated on their exam, and to prevent them from taking the GMAT again. GMAC has already done this to at least one test-taker. The saga is ongoing.

More difficult due to the Scoretop controversy?

If anything, it has gotten easier. An identical performance might even net you 10 more points now compared to when there are a hundred scoretoppers taking the test with you.

That's not quite how it works. When your scaled scores are determined, you are graded against the questions you see, not against the people in the room with you (or even against the people taking the test this year).

If you get most of your questions at the 35-level right (for illustration, I'll pretend the test grades questions on the Quant scaled score scale here), and most of the questions at the 45-level wrong, you'll get something around 40 on your GMAT. And who decided what questions were 35-level questions and which were 45-level questions? The test-takers who answered them when they were diagnostic questions. That is, the difficulty level of your questions was determined a while ago, by earlier test-takers, including some ScoreTop subscribers.

The potential problem is this: if a lot of ScoreTop subscribers knew the answer in advance to a really difficult diagnostic question, one that would truly be a 50-level question if the calibration were done only by legitimate test-takers, the question would have been answered correctly more often than it should have been - the ScoreTop subscribers would all get it right. This question might then be inappropriately calibrated as a lower-difficulty question, maybe a 40-level question instead, and if you're in the 35-45 range on your test, you might get this crazy-difficult question, even though it's inappropriate for your level, and get overly penalized for not answering a "medium-level" question correctly. If enough ScoreTop subscribers had access to live diagnostic questions, this would definitely make your test harder today.

All that said, I did a quick mathematical estimate of the effect all of this should have had on calibration, and therefore on current (fair) test scores, and based on the information about ScoreTop subscriptions from the legal documents from the GMAC lawsuit and some data from GMAC research reports about the diagnostic question pool, along with some (simplistic, by necessity) assumptions, I concluded that this 'calibration effect' from ScoreTop probably has, on average, hurt honest test-takers today by about 0.4 scaled score points. That's not a great amount, but it's not inconsequential either, and is certainly unfortunate for the honest test-taker. I don't have enough data to do a proper estimate (I doubt even GMAC does) - I was only trying to determine the order of magnitude of the 'calibration effect' - but the effect isn't enormous, thankfully.

[rhymes_with_luck]

Thanks a lot Ian for such an analysis.
So, what is the remedy? How can we get tuf questions for practise?

Please help.

[Tarmac]

ScoreTop was a website that distributed 'live' GMAT questions (real questions from the current GMAT test pool) and encouraged its members to post such questions to its forums. These activities (disclosing live questions, enticing others to do so, and viewing live questions) are all violations of agreements test-takers enter into when registering for and when taking their GMAT. In addition, these activities are violations of copyright. GMAC recently won a $2.3 million judgment against ScoreTop for multiple copyright infringements (their claim for tortious interference was deemed duplicative). GMAC was also awarded the scoretop domain, and ScoreTop's PayPal account records of roughly 6000 subscribers, and is now threatening to cancel the scores of those it can demonstrate knowingly cheated on their exam, and to prevent them from taking the GMAT again. GMAC has already done this to at least one test-taker. The saga is ongoing.

More difficult due to the Scoretop controversy?

If anything, it has gotten easier. An identical performance might even net you 10 more points now compared to when there are a hundred scoretoppers taking the test with you.

That's not quite how it works. When your scaled scores are determined, you are graded against the questions you see, not against the people in the room with you (or even against the people taking the test this year).

If you get most of your questions at the 35-level right (for illustration, I'll pretend the test grades questions on the Quant scaled score scale here), and most of the questions at the 45-level wrong, you'll get something around 40 on your GMAT. And who decided what questions were 35-level questions and which were 45-level questions? The test-takers who answered them when they were diagnostic questions. That is, the difficulty level of your questions was determined a while ago, by earlier test-takers, including some ScoreTop subscribers.

The potential problem is this: if a lot of ScoreTop subscribers knew the answer in advance to a really difficult diagnostic question, one that would truly be a 50-level question if the calibration were done only by legitimate test-takers, the question would have been answered correctly more often than it should have been - the ScoreTop subscribers would all get it right. This question might then be inappropriately calibrated as a lower-difficulty question, maybe a 40-level question instead, and if you're in the 35-45 range on your test, you might get this crazy-difficult question, even though it's inappropriate for your level, and get overly penalized for not answering a "medium-level" question correctly. If enough ScoreTop subscribers had access to live diagnostic questions, this would definitely make your test harder today.

All that said, I did a quick mathematical estimate of the effect all of this should have had on calibration, and therefore on current (fair) test scores, and based on the information about ScoreTop subscriptions from the legal documents from the GMAC lawsuit and some data from GMAC research reports about the diagnostic question pool, along with some (simplistic, by necessity) assumptions, I concluded that this 'calibration effect' from ScoreTop probably has, on average, hurt honest test-takers today by about 0.4 scaled score points. That's not a great amount, but it's not inconsequential either, and is certainly unfortunate for the honest test-taker. I don't have enough data to do a proper estimate (I doubt even GMAC does) - I was only trying to determine the order of magnitude of the 'calibration effect' - but the effect isn't enormous, thankfully.

Isn't that an extremely long way to say that it might net you 10 extra points?

[rhymes_with_luck]

tarmac,

practising lots of CRs, I presume?

[robertpatrick]

How could it get you 10 more points? Mr. Ian Stewart said that it has hurt honest test takers, if anything that would mean most people would lose ten more points.

[Tarmac]

The GMATer was worried that with the recent Scoretop scandal, the GMAT would now be even more difficult.

I was replying that this is wrong. The test is the same. The only thing that could happen is that cheater scores will be reduced and your non-cheater score might rise very slightly as a result.

Unless you are cheating. Then yes, the GMAT just became more difficult for you.

[Ian Stewart]

Isn't that an extremely long way to say that it might net you 10 extra points?

No, I'm saying the exact opposite. If people knew answers in advance for diagnostic questions one year ago, that will affect the calibration of questions you see on the GMAT today, which will affect your score- questions that truly should be considered 'hard' might be considered 'medium', and if you get them wrong (as you likely will, unless you are at the top level), the test will think you are below the 'medium' level, which will lower your score. I described in detail how this works in my last post, and I won't reproduce that detail again.

I am trying, without success, to understand your point- all I can guess is that you think GMAC is going to retroactively boost scores for GMAT tests already taken to compensate for the fact that ScoreTop subscribers knew answers in advance. GMAC has said nothing to suggest they might adjust past scores- all they have said is that they will cancel the scores of those they can prove have cheated.