Here's another student who just sent me an ESR. Interesting stuff here.
Compare this Verbal 36 to the Verbal 40 in my recent post. The first 3/4 of the test are very, very similar. They miss the same number of questions (6) at basically the same difficulty. The 36 happened to have easier questions in the third quarter, but the average of the misses was quite similar. But the big difference is the last quarter!
The 36 missed three at medium high, and the 40 missed one at medium high.
POINT BEING:
The ending was worth four points here. Two questions.
VERBAL 36 ESR:

Now let's look at the quant 44 compared to the above quant 48.
The 44 starts off MUCH better. Only misses 2 of the first 14. The 48 missed 4. Now, the 2 missed in the first 7 of the 48 were quite hard, BUT the 2 missed in the second 7 of the 48 was similar to the average of the 2 missed in the first 7 of the 44.
Quote:
https://i.imgur.com/Clyg9yk.png
But the 48 misses 2 of the last 14. And the the 44 misses 7 of the last 14, at pretty similar overall average levels.
So, again, we see a similar beginning (arguably a BETTER beginning) resulting in a lower score based on performance of the end. I think this furth punctures the idea that the 'first questions matter more.'