36/36 on Verbal yet final score not V51

Hey,

I have a question geared towards GMAT experts regarding the Verbal scoring.

I have just finished taking the official practice test 6 and something quite surprising happened that I find unfair.

My verbal score came out as V48 and so I thought I must have answered a single question incorrectly in the Verbal section. However, upon review it turns out that I have answered all the questions correctly with several minutes left over, but I still only got a V48, whereas I would expect a 36/36 Verbal to result in V51 (I know this, as I have gotten V51 with 36/36 in one of the other official practice tests in the past).

I then checked to see whether this discrepancy actually affected my overall score and I am almost certain it did, as I got a 760 with V48 Q48. In my experience, usually every 1 point missed from Q51 equals in a 10 point decrease in the scaled score, so with a perfect Verbal section you'd expect Q48 to result in a (51-48)*10 i.e. 30 point reduction in the scaled total score, hence a score of 770. But this was not the case this time around and it appears that even when answering all questions of V correctly my score got penalized.


My questions is, is there a chance that this would actually happen on a live test as well? I find this incredibly unfair to the test taker, as with no fault of my own, I received a 10 point penalty just because the algorithm failed to ask questions with the right difficulty levels. If this is a possibility, is there a way to complain/ask for a review under such circumstances?

I know that it is probably very unlikely that this situation would happen on the real test, but the possibility of it is worrying and I would want to know just in case!

Any replies from experts who have any insight into this would be much appreciated.

Thanks!