I have observed the effect you are referring to on the Classic GMAT. I’m not sure that I can immediately provide a scientific proof of that effect but I believe I’ve noticed that relationship on the number of scores…
For GMAT focus, the situation is Different. There is a very clear relationship between section score and the total score. On the GMAT focus, there’s no discrimination and it’s a very linear relationship. 1 extra point on quant or verbal or data insights section will give you the same exact contribution to the final score. I have ran regressions and it’s a very straightforward formula with great precision.
So with Focus, if you have room to improve in one of the sections and it’s easier to improve than another section, you want to maximize the section you can improve with least effort.
However this logic only goes so far because getting additional points on each section gets progressively harder… if you look at the percentile curves, the expectation is that very few people will be getting very high quantitative scores compared to the current situation… we will see about that of course but if you can push your quant and data insights to the limit, you can sort of slide on the verbal portion of the test. And my expectation is that similar to the gym at classic, business schools will mostly care about the overall score and not so much your split.
Sim_SG3
This might be a weird question with questionable logic at best. Possibly one that has no place on this sub-forum,
but...If I'm not wrong, a small score increase in Verbal really boosts your score in the Classic GMAT when compared to a similar score jump in Quant. Basically, a +1 in Verbal contributes more to an increase in overall score than a +1 in Quant. I always assumed this was due to fewer people scoring high in Verbal and the sectional percentiles contributing to the overall score.
Pre-Emptive Question: Am I wrong here?
Actual Question: Do you think this would apply to the Focus Edition as well?
I feel like the idea is kind of supplemented by the score-to-percentile mapping predictions folks have been releasing lately, but I could be totally wrong. To top it off, we have a whole new variable with the introduction of Data Insights and we are yet to understand how these three sections work together to make up the overall score.
But this is a question that keeps me up at night and there's no better forum to ask on than here.
Posted from my mobile device