any change on GMAT?

That's the kind of thing that I did not want to happen right before I take the test.

I'm taking the gmat on Monday. I'll post my test score and gmat prep scores.

GMATPREP:- Q: 47-49 Verbal : 44-47

Actual Test: Q : 48 Verbal: 27 AWA 5.5

Lumone, you will do fine. Good luck!

So Verbal is the guilty b-----d then. Did you get any long science passages on the RC?

One long science passage, But was fairly simple. RC was my strong point, so it never troubled me...

Interesting....

But, from what I remember, most of the post-mortems mentioned they realized what they had skimped on.

Bhatia..

Did you have a lot of repeat questions (verbal) in GMATPREP ? Were you nervous during Verbal?
44 to 27 is a huge difference.

Yes! I did see some repeat questions on GMATPREP , primarily in the SC part, and a few CR's . Probably because many of them were already answered by me on GMATCLUB. So I will agree that yes , my score can be inflated because of seing some questions previously. But by almost 20 points in Verbal is what scares me...

I did solve around 10 sets, with not more than 8 wrong in Verbal, and repeated the OG , with a hit rate of greater than 90% in SC, CR and RC's.

Im unsure of what went wrong in the test. Maybe my first few questions were wrong, and therefore I got an easy Verbal test, which made me feel that Im doing very well, and built a false sense of comfort. Im still not sure, as unlike the GRE, we cant order a score report which shows the sequence of incorrect questions and answers..

Anyways, all I would suggest is do your GMAT PREP well,especially the Quant Section. A lot of repeated questions, some with identical values appeared on my test. Some had different values but exactly identical approach... Its possible these were experimental questions, but in the test every question counts...

Also I dont think I was nervous on the Verbal Section, the first time I took my GMAT in April I got a 35 Verbal, and I was nervous then as I found the Quant to be much harder than what I had prepared for, and that reflected on my Verbal. But this time, I was calm, I felt my quant had gone well , and there was no nervousness when I started the Verbal test... On the contrary , with each question confidence was buildingup, as I saw almost 3 - 4 CRS in the first 5 questions , which made me feel that I am doing well.. This usually happened in GMAT PREP when I did well in quant..

I will add to this too. My GMATprep scores were in the 700s but took the actual GMAT last Monday and got 590 (Q47,V25) for the second attempt. I don't know what to do.

In my opinion, It is incorrect to compare inflated GMATPREP scores with real scores. Repeat GMATPREP scores can inflate all over the place. Eg. If you get 3-4 700 level difficult repeat questions, you are already well into the 700's . The GMAT myth list published by mba.com(interview) had mentioned that once the computer determines your score band, it may throw out some really easy questions just to get you to complete the test. If GMATPREP is based on a similar simulation, it is possible that once you answer a few repeat 700 questions correct, the band kicks in and you end up with a good inflated score. Only the first GMATPREPs can be a good indicator.

It is also possible that when one subjects to several GMATPREP retakes in the last days before the exam, complacency kicks in because of several repeats. I mean, complacency not related to inflated scores , but related to pacing and concentration.

I am just speculating.

I'm going to be brutally honest and say I really don't think there are changes to the test (at least not sudden changes that should prevent you from scoring well). There are still plenty of people getting good scores on the GMAT (one 750 posted just recently). The percentages show that's the case.

If you're scoring around 700 in GMATPrep, you shouldn't expect that will transfer into a 700 on the real thing. You need to be scoring in the 760 (+/- 10) range. I was consistently scoring around 760 on both GMATPrep and MGMAT when I took the real thing. I went in expecting to score 30 points lower and that was about where I ended up. Now, whether you score 30 points lower or 50 points lower than practice scores I think is probably just a matter of luck. But there are not too many people that absolutely rock the test and score better than what they did in practice (though of course there are exceptions).

I'm one that scored better on the real deal than on practice. My 2 GMATPrep scores were 710 and 710 and the real thing was 720. Now that's not rocking the GMAT compared to the practice tests as you suggested, but it's not the 30 - 50 points lower either.

Just to add another data point, I took the exam on august 2nd and got a 770 (Q50, V46). My GMAT Prep scores were much lower as I took them 1 month (710) and 3 weeks (680, also took right after a fight with wifey) before my actual exam and probably didn't try my hardest on them. After I really started studying about 3 weeks before the exam, I was scoring 760 on the GMAT Prep retakes (no math repeats, a lot of verbal repeats). My verbal scores were around 40-42 even with the RC and CR repeats so I was a bit shocked at my actual verbal score. I got a lot of tough RC on the actual exam.

I don't know if the GMAT test has changed, but I'm not even sure if it did the percentile would change that much. Aren't they based on like the last 3 years of GMAT data?

Apparently not since a Q47 went from being 81st p.c. to 79th p.c. within a matter of months.

they're suppose to be based on 3 years of data (rolling).
If thats true, then the current decrease in percentile is probably much more than it seems
I'm guessing if we just look at this year's data, we'll see a Q47 drop to something like a 75% haha.

the AWA % is pretty interesting too - its been dropping so fast! Just a few years ago a 6.0 was 95%. Now its like close to 85% or something haha.

Not funny! They still better consider my Q47 as 80%+ !