GMATPrep- continuation of what if scenarios(changing perhaps?)

Hi avig,

You already seem to understand that the scoring algorithm on the Official GMAT is complicated - there's far more that goes into generating your score than just the number of correct answers. As such, you CANNOT think in those terms. Since a number of your questions in both the Quant and Verbal sections are going to be experimental (meaning that they will NOT count), getting those questions correct or incorrect won't matter (the problem is that you won't know which questions are experimental and which ones count, so you have to do your best on all of them). Instead, take a good look at the questions that you got wrong and think about WHY you got those questions wrong. Was it because of a silly/little mistake or was it because the question was too hard? At your current Quant level, the GMAT becomes really "sensitive" to little mistakes, so you have to be meticulous in your work and keep the silly mistakes from happening.

To take all of this a step further, if you're not sure if a question is too hard or not, then you should post it in the Forums to see if the question was "gettable." In real simple terms, to maximize your score, you have to correctly answer all of the questions that are "gettable." You don't have to get all of the questions correct to score a Q51 either.

As an aside on something BmoreNerd wrote - you CAN get the first question wrong in each section and still score an 800, so you shouldn't be too worried about that. To stay on point though, assuming that the first question was not experimental, it would help your score if you got it correct.

Another factor in all of this is that the GMAC practice CATs draw from a rather limited pool of questions, so there's not as much variation and there's a very real possibility that performing "the exact same way" on Test Day could lead to a different score (within +- 30 points, according to GMAC).

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

Interestd to hear expert opinion on this given that I will also be appearing for the GMAT soon!

If you're aiming for a very high total or section score, it might be worth checking out some of the publicly shared ESRs to see the types of performances that can get them. The Share GMAT Experience subforum may also help provide a sense how likely/long different score jumps are to achieve.

-contact: gmatknight site | gmatclub dm

Have you already taken all the official GMAC practice exams?