Got Q78 in Quant even though only 5 mistakes - GMAT FE

Question

Hi, I gave my GMAT Focus Edition recently and got a surprisingly low score in Quant even though I felt it had gone well. Now that the score is available to me, I can see that I made only 5 errors, yet my percentile is just 50 because of Q78 score. I'm not able to understand what went wrong & how I can improve my score other than accuracy?

Due to this, my overall score also took a hit - I got a 615, while I got a V83 and D80. My order of sections was Quant, DI, Verbal. Any guidance on how I can improve my next attempt would be appreciated!

Archit3110 · Answer

4th question wrong was of high level difficulty which was attempted wrong , hence dip in score.. try to avoid any mistakes in first 10 questions..

yc168 · Answer

1. You did not seem to keep long enough streaks of consecutive correct answers, e.g. Q4 and Q9 wrong. Therefore you probably did not get to hard questions in the first half.
2. The streak from Q10 to Q17 was nice. However, you got wrong answers from Q18 to Q20, which again probably prevented you from getting to hard-level questions to pull up your score.

Would suggest to practice questions by topic and by difficulty, and try to increase your accuracy in medium to medium-hard level questions.

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

The scoring algorithm for Quant is pretty unforgiving, with some students receiving sub-50th-percentile scores with only 2 or 3 incorrect responses. So, on test day, *every question counts*.

This also means that one or two silly mistakes can tank your score.

One way to minimize such mistakes is to adopt a strategy of reading the question, deriving an answer, and then re-reading the question before submitting your response. This strategy can prove useful since, while solving the question, you identify the key components of the prompt, so when you re-read the question later, key information such as *x is an INTEGER* or *y is POSITIVE* will pop out at you if you neglected to consider that information in your solution.

For calculation errors, practice with an error log where you record and review your mistakes to identify patterns or frequent errors. This method not only helps in correcting repeated mistakes but also sharpens your attention to detail.

Here are some articles you can check out for more advice: 
 
   Improving Your Accuracy on the GMAT   
   GMAT Error Log: Do I Need One?

Got Q78 in Quant even though only 5 mistakes - GMAT FE

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