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Re: Question About Grading (Took two Practice Tests)
[#permalink]
05 Mar 2015, 22:37
Hi jnaz,
The scoring algorithm on the Official GMAT is far more complicated than most people realize. It takes into account a number of different factors, including the relative difficulty of the question, whether you were expected to get it correct or not, the placement of the question, what's going on "around it", the "strings" of correct and incorrect answers, whether the question even counts or not (some questions are "experimental" and are worth 0), if you leave questions unanswered and incur a penalty, etc. As such, you shouldn't be spending time trying to figure it all out. You'd be better served working on building up your skills.
Percentiles can also be deceptive/problematic in that they compare your performance to that of other Test Takers and not to the Test itself. As an extreme example, if you got almost every question correct (which would be an incredible performance), but all of the other Test Takers got every question correct, then you would be at the 1st percentile. The Scaled Scores are far more meaningful, so you should include those numbers if you're curious about your performance relative to the Test (and would like some advice).
A far more useful gauge would be to review the CAT and determine how many questions you SHOULD have gotten correct, but didn't (due to a silly/little mistake). Those mistakes are the things that you have to fix to score at a higher level.
GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich