Grading: HELP :)

Question

Hi everyone,

I have recently taken two practice exams on Veritas Prep.
Here are the results:

DATE SCORE Percentile Correct Completed
October 4 610 66% 53 / 91 91 / 91 Review >
October 16 650 78% 47 / 91 91 / 91 Review >

May someone explain me how that can be possible ? I have been having more answers wrong in the second test, still i got a better grade.
Besides, does anyone know Veritas Prep ? Do they give an accurate grade ? Is it reliable ?

For the second exam, I thought I had really done really really bad because I didn't use my time efficiently, I nearly skipped all the questions at IR.
Here is the details of my test 2:

Score Percentile Correct Completed
AWA N/A N/A N/A 1 / 1 Review >
IR 2 (of 8) 12% 25% 12 / 12 Review >
Quant 40 (of 60) 52% 51% 37 / 37 Review >
Verbal 40 (of 60) 90% 61% 41 / 41 Review >

Total
650
78
52%
91 / 91
Review >
Date taken: October 16

How is it possible I took 650 with 2 correct answers at IR ? :/

Thanks for your help

VeritasPrepBrian · Answer

Congratulations on the score improvement!

While it's certainly a little confusing, keep in mind that "percent correct" is only loosely correlated with "GMAT score" because of the adaptive scoring. These articles below can explain a little more how Item Response Theory works and makes that percent correct a little misleading on your way to your actual score:

https://www.veritasprep.com/blog/2013/07/gmat-tip-of-the-week-stop-counting-rights-and-wrongs-in-your-gmat-practice-tests/ 
 https://poetsandquants.com/2013/07/21/the-mystery-of-gmat-scoring/

I hope you don't mind but I looked up your tests and the real differences were:

-In your previous test your quant percentile was just about the same but on this test your verbal score shot up even while your quant stayed pretty similar.

-So let's look at verbal and you can see where the real jump came - on the 650 test, you got 8 of the first 10 verbal questions right, which means that toward the middle/end of the test the questions you were missing were toward the higher-difficulty end. On the previous test your misses came earlier - you missed about 6 of the first 10, so even though you were getting more questions right toward the end, they were easier questions so they didn't help your score as much.

It's also important to mention that IR doesn't count toward your 200-800 score at all, so whether you had gotten them all right or all wrong you'd still have had a 650.

From all of our research these tests are scoring really close to the GMAT Prep and official GMAT scores, so I'm really confident that your score improvement is well-earned and that you can use these scores to gameplan for future improvement.

yannjuve · Answer

VeritasPrepBrian

Hey, thank you very much for your very detailed answer, everything is clearer now in my head now:)
I didnt know all that suff, especially the fact that IR section is not taken into account in the final grade. But I heard most of the school ask your performance at it though.
But does it really matter then ? Like if you took 700 at gmat and that you only took 20% at IR, would it give a bad impression ?

Thanks again

VeritasPrepBrian · Answer

The IR thing is interesting - because it's still relatively new (it debuted on the GMAT in June, 2012) many schools still aren't sure how to use it in admissions decisions. Largely that's because they haven't had many (if any) students with IR scores complete a semester of school yet, so they don't have a good read on how well that particular data point correlates with students' success in the classroom and in other important elements like the job search.

At the same time, many *employers* (consultancies, banks) have started to express real interest in using IR as a predictive tool for their job candidates, and the preliminary data on IR scores from GMAC is showing it to be predictive, so if schools aren't giving IR much weight today (and from what it sounds like they're not just yet), it's only a matter of time before they do.

For the 2013-14 application cycle I'd still say that it's probably more important to "not get a bad score" (on the 8 point scale I'd worry a little about having a 1 or a 2 and probably a 3) than it is to get a great score (I just don't think today that an 8 would get you in where a 5 or 6 would keep you out), but the longer your time horizon for applying (if it's next year or 2-3 years down the road) the more I'd start to think about prioritizing IR closer to quant/verbal in terms of study time/effort.

yannjuve · Answer

Thanks again for your great help

appreciate it ! now i think I know everything about it, I can keep on practicing ! THANKS EDIT: Ok i thought i had understood well but i have doubts again :D I don't know how you checked my former results, if you manage to have a look at the last one thats great

Really poor performance last week, so i have a question here, how come do I get such a low score particularly in maths section? U told me that the first answers were important that it was trying to evaluate your level. Well first 18 questions I got only 4 wrong which don't look so critical to me, no? Still I got that low grade :p Thanks again

VeritasPrepBrian · Answer

There are a bunch of "hidden" (to the test-taker) factors that go into GMAT scoring, so things like "earlier questions matter more" isn't entirely true (but not entirely false either). In your case on this recent test:

-You did pretty well early in terms of % correct, but missing the first question meant that the next few questions were below-average difficulty questions and so even though you got 5 of the first 6 correct, most of those 5 were in the below average to average range so you "wasted" a few early questions "showing the test you weren't below average" instead of "showing the test you were above average".

-You missed 7 of the last 9, so where around question 27-28 the system had you looking pretty firmly above average, you went into a free-fall toward the end and that took you from probably the 60th-65th percentile are down below average.

-It's relatively rare but your case is an example - your first half of the test (mostly correct answers and a strong upward trend after missing the first question but digging yourself out of that hole) and your last third (pretty much a straight nose dive missing 7 of 9) were different enough that at one point the system's projected margin of error went *up*. The system thought it had a pretty good read on you in the mid-20s of that section, but then around question 29 the bottom dropped out of your score and the system had to recalibrate its estimate of you fairly dramatically. 1-2 more evenly distributed correct answers from 30-37 could have helped a lot as the system was in "how low is this guy, really?" mode.

In terms of "order of questions":

-If you don't do well on the first 10-15 questions you almost certainly won't do well overall. Not necessarily because "they matter more" but more because you've dug such a hole that you have to be just about perfect the rest of the way to convince the system that its initial estimate of "this guy just doesn't have it" was wrong.

-BUT if you *do* do well on the first 10-15 questions that DOES NOT guarantee success. You still have to be at least around 50% accurate in every 6-8 question block the rest of the way...if you go on a rough run of missing chunks of consecutive questions the system will readjust to that.

Grading: HELP :)

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