Thanks for the analysis,
bb. Based on this data you have derived from the official GMAT Focus practice exams,
could it be that the GMAT Focus is / will be section adaptive like the GRE, instead of question-level adaptive like the current, "classic" GMAT?
In other words: perhaps the exam's difficulty adjustments are not made until
after the 1st and 2nd sections—based on your
overall performance on those sections, and that as a result, your performance only affects the difficulty of the
next section(s)—which (the second part only) is something interesting and new that GMAC has in fact already revealed about the new exam?
Given the additional fact that you can now mark up to 3 questions per section for later review—and possibly even change your answers to those questions—it would seem impossible to maintain the exact same question-level adaptive nature of the test, anyway.
Of course, there is also a third possibility, which is that the new GMAT Focus uses a hybrid of the question adaptive and section-level adaptive scoring systems: it might only make adjustments after the first
half of questions in each section (Q/V/DI), for example. In this case, however, there is still a chance that difficulty adjustments would be made based on answers that are later changed by the student—which is illogical and unfair.
If the scoring / difficulty algorithm has in fact changed, then this would of course delineate a marked and important change from the question-adaptive algorithm of the current GMAT, where adjustments to the test's difficulty levels are made after each and every response on the Quant and Verbal sections (except for the 9 "pretest" / unscored experimental questions: 3 on Quant and 6 on Verbal).
The IR section (3 pretest questions) on the current exam is not adaptive, but GMAC has indicated that the Focus's new Data Insights section (IR + DS) is in fact adaptive. The question remains, however: does this mean question-level adaptive, or section-level adaptive?
To state the obvious: the question-level adaptive scoring algorithm currently used on Verbal and Quant sections of the GMAT is also the most logical explanation for the current "front-loaded" nature of the Quant and (to a lesser extent) Verbal scoring systems—where questions at the beginning count more than those at the end.
If the scoring algorithm has changed for the GMAT Focus, then so must our strategies to succeed on the GMAT, especially those related to pacing / time management.Anyway, very interesting take, and I look forward to learning more.