High Verbal Score CR/SC/RC Difficulty Breakdown

Hi uncreative56,

The algorithm followed by the actual GMAT exam is still unknown. Hence, every question that comes your way is important and getting them right sets the tone of the algorithm.

The key is to get high accuracy in easy & medium level questions and make the algorithm serve you hard questions. And then, you need to get the hard questions right as well in order to score 700+.

GMAT is a test of application of concepts. So, before you start practicing questions, you should be conceptually clear and learn the right methodology. So, instead of directly practicing questions, make sure that you learn the right process to solve questions. Once you do that, you don't have to worry about the difficulty level of the question.

Hope it helps!

Hello, uncreative56. To add to what has been said above, I would urge you not to assume you would answer all Easy questions correctly and should therefore ignore studying them. I say this all the time, but the GMAT™ is an exam that punishes mistakes on lower-level questions more harshly than it rewards accuracy on upper-level questions, and I have seen overly confident test-takers crash and burn during the exam because they might miss a not-so-hard question and dig a hole that takes a few more questions to get out of.

I am attaching images of three separate ESRs, from oldest to most recent, in which the test-taker missed no more than one question in Verbal. Each time, the average difficulty rises over the first two quarters of the section, and then it starts to drop off. I have not seen exceptions to this general trend (again, among test-takers who have missed no more than a single question in the Verbal section—the Quant graph looks different, reflecting more of an uphill battle).

Remember, "Average Difficulty" does not mean absolute difficulty, so it is quite conceivable that even a top-performer could get tossed an easier question at some point. I think RC presents the likeliest vehicle for delivery of such questions. You might see four questions in a passage that range from Easy to Hard, but the average difficulty might be Medium or Medium-Hard, depending on the questions. I also suspect that different test-takers may see different questions from the same passage, based on prior performance within the section. This could explain why many OG passages contain six or more questions in the set, as well as why, in just about any official RC passage on this site (even those designated "Sub-500"), you can find at least one hard question.

All of this is to say that in the end, you simply want to answer as many questions correctly as you can, and you want to practice with an unbiased view of the question difficulty. (Give anyone enough questions, and eventually that person will crack. You want to increase the probability that you will not slip up on easier questions, and you cannot do that without practicing some of them for reassurance.)

Good luck with your studies.

- Andrew

I can say that, if you're scoring V45+, you'll see around six or seven hard questions of which maybe three will be super hard. Other than those, the questions will be medium to medium hard.

So, mostly 600-level and easier 700-level questions with a handful of truly hard ones mixed in.

Also, the difficulty level fluctuates even if you're getting all the questions correct. So, don't expect to see all hard questions from a certain point on.