GMAT FE 635 Debrief - 14 Dec

GFE is very sensitive to mistakes but this seems extremely unlikely - worth checking with GMAC.

One of my mocks, I scored Q86 with only 1 mistake (Question 5 or thereabouts). Unless you have missed one question which you clearly havent, your quant score doesn't make any logical sense.

Let's see what the response is. Great score otherwise give yourself a pat on the back regardless!

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bb

Hi Yes, I reviewed two questions, got them correct from incorrect.

But just to put it out there, i saw someones report where the person had changed two questions from incorrect to correct with all the rest questions correct and eventually got a Q90

So i don't think they can or should penalize me for reviewing two questions and getting them correct at last.

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bb

I reviewed question number 2 and 19 and got both right

Also in practice, i used to get 4 to 6 questions wrong in Quant usually, but that was mainly because i was practicing on harder question sets.

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Yeah i did take it in that order, quant, verbal and then DI.

Looks like I've gotten the worst case scenario of Gmat scoring, but even with all the adaptiveness i am not able to wrap around my head on this score!

TBH if you got full marks for Quant that'll be 695 already (from 635), and since it's Q6 you likely got an easy (but tricky) question wrong.
Probably a good idea to check through every question if you have the time. I managed to change 1 from incorrect to correct for my Q90.

For the other sections, I just needed to concentrate (and some luck) during the exam. Can't really give you tips on how to prepare because I didn't at all. My only comment on verbal is that usually there aren't trick questions unlike quant. For DI, be prepared to get several wrong but that usually doesn't drop your DI score and total score too much.

Hi Paumilpatel,

Thanks for sharing your GMAT Focus experience, and congrats on your very solid 635 (85%) starting score.

Considering that there are only 30 points available per GMAT Focus Quant, Verbal, and Data Insights section (60-90), losing 6 points on Quant (20% of the available points) for just 1 question wrong (less than 5% of the 21 questions) is indeed insanity.

On the other side of the Focus scoring curve, however, I've seen students losing nearly as little as a half-point per question. For example, a private tutoring student recently scored Q87 with 2 wrong, V88 with 2 wrong, and DI82 with 7 wrong.

Presumably, these students earned harder questions overall, due to the question adaptive scoring algorithm, and perhaps also benefitted from the additional section adaptivity of the GMAT Focus.

There is also another consideration: when you answer an easy question wrong, you lose more points than when you answer a hard question wrong (and vice versa). Perhaps you made a careless mistake on what GMAC considered an easy/medium question.

There some is good news, however: for example, to state the obvious, you are only one question away from a perfect 90/90 on Quant! Your overall Quant percentile (85%) is also very strong, and is comparable to a Q50/51 (86%) on the classic GMAT.

For your reference, I've also posted images below of the GMAT Focus (top) and GMAT classic (bottom) percentile tables for Quant.

Any chance you could post the actual images of your ESR? Thanks!

I had the same for quant…
FE1: 1 wrong, 85%ile and 84 scaled score. I think I corrected 2 questions in edits.

FE2: 1 wrong, 92%ile and 86 scaled score. Corrected two questions in edits as well.

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The algorithm is interesting. I took the focus yesterday and this is my breakdown.

Overall: 645
Quant - Verbal - DI (Took in this order)

Q82: 4 wrong (4, 17, 18, 20) Section was similar to Mock.
V85: 9 wrong.....(2,3,8,9,10,11, 17,20,21) I got 13 CR questions and 10 RC. The CR questions were the hardest CR questions I ever seen on my life. I don't know why my verbal section was so hard. CR 83% and RC 97%
DI79: 10 wrong (4,5,7,11,12,13,14,18,19,20) This entire section was super hard as well. Never seen DI questions like this before in any of the mocks or practice.

I understand the test is supposed to be adaptive but the only way I could have gotten V85 with 9 wrong if majority of the test had medium/hard hard difficulty questions. Don't understand why my V and DI was this hard...

Just adding more data points to this conversation. Recently gave GFE and scored 645. Since my percentiles from GFE 645 and GCE 710 are exactly the same (89%ile), I can assume 645=710 (as of 2024 Q1). As for the sectional breakdown, GFE was generous to me compared to the scores you posted. I got 90th percentile or 81 in DI with 8 questions totally wrong including 3 in a row. I got 91st percentile or 84 in Verbal with 6 questions totally wrong including 3 in a row. Finally, I got just 66th percentile or 80 in quant with 5 questions wrong. Comparing our scores to derive insights.

Quant: 84 with 1 wrong vs 80 with 5 wrong. (4 extra wrongs resulted in just 4 points less)
Verbal: 81 with 5 wrong resulting vs 84 with 6 wrong. (1 extra wrong resulted in 3 points more)
DI: 79 with 6 wrong vs 81 with 8 wrong. (2 extra wrong resulted in 2 points more.)

I have not compared the percentiles as sectional percentiles do not impact the final percentile directly and the sectional percentiles vs sectional scores on the official site are accurate.

I hoped the gmat would have minimized such issues with the GFE. However, it seems quiet the contrary. Faced such an issue with GCE where exact same sectional score and lesser number of incorrect questions compared to my colleague led me to get a lower score (20 point difference in a 700+ score) so I know how it must feel. All the best and I hope this helped.

Hi,

I am not a scoring algorithm expert but Q84 with 1 question wrong (that too not the very first one) seems really odd.

Try writing to GMAC, they might hopefully be able to give you an explanation.

Cheers

This is pretty insane... this would only make sense if you left the last question unanswered. Can you check on your report if you left the last question unanswered?
I really can't see how it would be Q84 with 1 wrong

If you answered all questions, do you have any idea what that 6th question was and its difficulty? (just grasping for straws here).

Hey BB thanks for sharing my bafflesness.

I completed the quant section 10 mins to spare, so i had definitely not left any que unanswered.

Nd the 6th question was a series question definitely a medium to difficult level question.

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Thank you! And you did reviews of questions in the last 10 mins or what did you use the time for?

Sorry for being so nosy, but trying to get every detail so we can track a pattern if there is a potential bug in the test software. It just seems quite crazy with 1 mistake. I have left 1 unanswered in quant in my GMAT Prep experiments. Leaving 1 question unanswered (last one obviously) gave me a score of Q85. 89th percentile so higher than what you got with just 1 mistake. It really really does not compute

Hi. I have played around with correct/incorrect and you are not penalized per se and test seems to be (within limits) treating changed answers just as though they were correct from get go, so I don't think you should have been penalized in any way but quick question, which question numbers were these? I guess we will see when you get your Score Report in a few days... just impatient and really weirded out with this score.

Thank you for the perspective Rajat!
Appreciate the additional depth and data points!

I have also seen people make multiple and numerous mistakes and walk away with decent scores.
I guess one more question for you Paumilpatel - what were your practice test scores for QUant?

Got it. How were your practice scores? Were they consistent or higher? my question is not so much for the number of mistakes but the practice scores, even if they had more mistakes. One theory could be that you got a really easy question set but the system still Eter your score close enough so to speak… 🤷‍♂️ I’m just trying to figure it out

bb egmat BrentTargetTestPrep

Can you guys please share your views on verbal and DI score on these number and format of mistakes?

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