(Un) Scientific analysis of gmatprep

Great! Then it would mean that all questions are equally important and maybe ensure that we don't miss the easy questions and therefore accuracy should be high on easy questions! Time for me to revisit the test taking strategy. Hmmm!

bsd one request.Just get all Rc correct with an avg of sc n Cr...then what happens.is it again a s low as 13 or so?Kudos dude.

yeah and a good experiment would be to get all rc right and the rest wrong... and then see how the verbal score shapes up... kind of like you did for SC and CR. Kudos!

I concur...I usually have a 44-45 quant and always have the boldface as my first question.

Boy! What would we all do without you around here, bsd_lover! Man, awesome analysis and great contributions from Suyashjhawar too. Thanks guys. It goes without saying that this masterpiece deserves a (+1)..Gotta bookmark this one! Is it worth a sticky and moving this thread upto a place where everyone can easily access this. The Mods have to determine that, I guess.

Remember having read this in some earlier discussion. That if you finish that Quant section much ahead of time, your initial Verbal questions are extremely difficult. How true is that ??

Based on what I've seen so far, the difficult verbals show their ugly head upfront when my quant performance is good, not when it is quick. Although I've finished quant quickly several times (e.g. when I guessed half of them), the initial verbal is always a lot easier compared with the question I see when I hit 50 on Q.

Dependence Verbal on Quant score is very interesting....

bsd waiting for the Rc strategy....check out what happens when you get all Rc correct...

this is just fantastic, kudos!

pls continue your second experiment on getting first 20 questions correct and remaining 17 wrong....this experiment will help us to calculate the time that we can spend on first few questions.

another data point for this one....i took a gmatprep yesterday and typically score a 44-45 on quant...but botched two simple problems due to simple calculation errors and ended up with a 43 quant. When I got my verbal section I started with a easy problem. Now when I score a 44-45 quant, I almost always start with the boldface question...very interesting indeed.

Don't read too much into getting a BF in GmatPrep. BF are no more difficult than other CR questions. I am sure that GMAC does not choose the first verbal question on the basis of the quant score.

5. What is the importance of the 1st 5 questions?
Experiment : If I mess up the first five and kick butt in the remaining can I reach my normal potential (as the OG claims)
Methodology : Ensure I get the first five wrong and focus on the remaining 32
Results : Q49 with 7 wrong overall.
Analysis: I, for some reason, thought that the 1st 5 are pretty crucial to the GMAT score. Boy was I wrong. I made sure that I got all first five incorrect (I actually solved them and then picked the wrong one just to be sure). Then I really focused on the last 32. Got a couple of them wrong but over all 30 correct. Final score = 49. Of course I am sure it would be a 50 if I had some more success in the 1st 5, however, this shows that even if you totally stuff up the 1st five, you can still pick it up and reach 49 Q, a most acceptable quant score.

6. Improving RC will greatly improve my final score.
Experiment : how important RC really ?
Methodology: I decide to guess all CRs and SCs and only focus on RCs.
Results - Final V score 6 . Although I got 10/11 RCs correct. Total 28 wrong.
Analysis: This was again, totally unexpected. I genuinely thought that RCs mattered, at least as much, if not more, than CRs and SC. This experiment showed that if anything, RC mattered LESS When I did the guess work for CRs and SCs at least I was getting a V score in the 10s. I certainly wont take this result as an indication that I can slack off on RCs just yet ..

One of the problems with figuring out the algorithm with your methodology is that the order of the questions changes. Imagine if you got 5 sentence corrections in a row and you missed all of them it is going to appear like Scs are more important. The scoring doesn't differentiate the question type only the level of the question.

I agree with lsguy..."The scoring doesn't differentiate the question type only the level of the question." after your analysis and others i feel,the best way is dont think much about it and go with the aim of doing well bcos even after getting first few correct you got 47 plus and even you get first five wrong,then also 47 plus.But was surprised with the Rc results.

Moral of the Story:Dont worry much whether boldface or first five or last five etc!

guys..my advice to you all is to take every question as if your life depends on it..get it correct..thats the winner's attitude..

everyone of should aim to get 51 on Q and 51 on V...

thats the winning attitude..

thats the key to success..each and everyone of us is capable of this feat..

just remember you have 2 mins/question..thats the discipline you need..

To give you guys some more perspective - 4/11 RC questions were within 1st 7 and I got all those correct.