Dummy Questions on GMAT

Hi hyoeun87,

Can you tell me exactly what information you're referring to? I ask because I've never personally stated what you claim you 'heard', so I'd like to know who you heard it from and what exactly you heard.

On Test Day, you will absolutely see a number of 'Experimental' questions - these are questions that are in the 'testing phase' and are likely to be used as 'active' questions on future administrations of the GMAT. Some of those questions will certainly be difficult, but it's not 'typical' that they will be. By design, GMAC has to 'test out' ALL of its questions - so the Experimental questions that you see will likely run the range from 'easy' to 'hard.' Unfortunately, since these questions are written in the same style as all of the active questions, it would be rather difficult for you to spot them.

As it stands though, learning proper Triage skills can be remarkably helpful on Test Day - and we teach that in detail as part of our Course.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

First understand why there are experimental questions:

Item Response Theory incorporates three metrics for each “item” (or “question” or “problem”): the B parameter is the closest measurement to pure “difficulty”. The C parameter is essentially a measure of likelihood that a correct answer can be guessed. And the A parameter tells the scoring system how much to weight that item. How are these three parameters assigned to each item?
In order to know what those A, B, and C parameters are, the GMAT has to test its new questions on a variety of users. So on each section, several problems just won’t count — they’re only there for research. (e.g. if many 750 scorers answer a particular experimental item incorrectly, it is likely that it has very high difficulty level and will be assigned the B parameter accordingly)

The research will be successful only if the participants do not know which questions are experimental and give their best on each.

Hence, there is absolutely no way of knowing which questions will count and which won't - GMAC ensures that.

For more details on GMAT scoring, check: https://www.gmatclub.com/forum/veritas-prep-resource-links-no-longer-available-399979.html#/2015/07 ... mat-score/

There are exactly 3 experimental questions on IR, 9 experimental questions on Quant (broken down by quarters 2/2/2/3), and 11 experimental questions on Verbal (broken down by quarters 2/3/3/3), meaning that there are 23 "dummy" questions out of the 90 questions on the GMAT (25.6% of all questions).

You can't tell an experimental question for sure, but if you get a question that looks like something you've never seen before, or seems way out of whack with the difficulty level you expected (especially when it's way harder than you were expecting), then it might be an experimental question.

But yes, making this assumption is of course always a huge gamble.

At least we now know (from analyzing the ESRs) exactly how many there are on each section, and that they are evenly distributed throughout the sections.

It would be nice if the GMAC could actually tell us how we answered the experimental questions, but it doesn't provide that information. Seeing that we performed relatively better on the experimental questions could give us a good reason for a retake, and vice-versa.

For example, in a worst-case Verbal scenario, you get 11 questions wrong...but they are all counted questions. That would give you a raw score of 19 out of 30 (63% correct), which usually leads to an overall score of about 30-35 out of 51.

Conversely, in the corresponding best-case Verbal scenario, you get 11 questions wrong...but they all happen to be experimental questions. You would get a raw score of 30 out of 30 (100% correct) and receive a perfect 51.

Kind of unfair if you ask me! But that's just how the GMAT works. As with any test, there is an element of luck involved..but on the GMAT, given its large amount of "dummy" questions and the question-level adaptivity, luck matters more than almost any other major standardized test. It rewards the test takers who can afford to pay for re-takes, and there is little room for error at the beginning of the Quant and Verbal sections, thanks to the adaptive scoring algorithm.

For more information: https://gmatclub.com/forum/hiline-gmat-a ... l#p1719701

There's no way to tell which questions are experimental questions- it's a simply a "flag" on the backend of the system that marks which should be counted toward your score and which should be treated separately. Their difficulty for the most part will "be determined". They won't all necessarily be difficult. Rather, based on % of people getting the question correct and the difficulty level they "ought to be at" based on where they are on the exam..that will determine what level of difficulty that question ought to have on future exams where that question will be a "real" question.

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