Good morning
TargetKellogg2024,
That's an interesting thesis about Verbal scores—but unfortunately, knowing that the average GMAT Focus Verbal subscore of
78.99 is now somewhat higher (relative to the new 60-90 scale) than the current average Verbal subscore of
27.51 (relative to the old 0-51 scale) does not conclusively tell us anything about the difficulty of the new GMAT Focus Verbal section.
In my opinion, it's much more likely that the
GMAT Focus scaled score conversions have simply changed relative to performance, since classic GMAT Verbal subscores were always deflated relative to Quant subscores anyway. Note that the average GMAT Focus subscores of
74.41 on Data Insights,
77.71 on Quant, and
78.99 on Verbal are now much closer to one another than the current averages for Quant (
41.3) and Verbal (
27.51).
These new scoring scales appear to be GMAC's effort to finally "even things out" when it comes to making Quant and Verbal subscores more comparable.
Given that the content of the GMAT Focus has barely changed, with the lone exception of logic-based Data Sufficiency questions on the Data Insights section,
I would expect the 23 Reading Comprehension and Critical Reasoning questions that remain on Verbal to stay difficult for most non-natives, even though Verbal subscores (but not percentiles) will
appear higher thanks to the new scaled score conversions. The good news is that we will find out soon when the official guides finally ship!
In my experience, ESL speakers are actually quite skilled at Sentence Corrections, and will not benefit disproportionately from its removal on the GMAT Focus. CR and RC are now the only two Verbal sections left—which is good news for some test-takers, and bad news for others.
90% cutoffs: 81 for DI, 86 for Q, 84 for V
95% cutoffs: 83 for DI, 88 for Q, 85 for V
99% cutoffs: 85 for DI, 90 for Q (actually "100%"), 87 for V
"100%" cutoffs: 89 for DI, 90 for Q, 89 for V