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HiLine

5. Impact of number of questions wrong on scores



These are the rough ranges for the number of questions people have got wrong to achieve a certain score:

Q51: 0-2
Q50: 1-6
Q49: 4-8
Q48: 6-9
Q47: 7-11
Q46: 9-10
Q45: 10-11

Keep in mind that these are out of the 30 Quant questions that count

V50: 0
V48: 1
V47: 2
V46: 2-3
V44: 3-5
V42: 4-5
V41: 4-6
V40: 7
V38: 8-11
V37: 8-10
V36: 8-10
V35: 9-12
V34: 7-11

Keep in mind that these are out of the 28 Verbal questions that count
HiLine, Could you please modify the above table? I've seen examples of a V41 and V40 with as many as 10 wrong.

The Quant tables need to modified significantly as well, in particular on the low end of the range. I have seen scores as low as Q42, for example, with only 9 questions wrong.

Thanks,
-Brian
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HiLine

5. Impact of number of questions wrong on scores



These are the rough ranges for the number of questions people have got wrong to achieve a certain score:

Q51: 0-2
Q50: 1-6
Q49: 4-8
Q48: 6-9
Q47: 7-11
Q46: 9-10
Q45: 10-11

Keep in mind that these are out of the 30 Quant questions that count

V50: 0
V48: 1
V47: 2
V46: 2-3
V44: 3-5
V42: 4-5
V41: 4-6
V40: 7
V38: 8-11
V37: 8-10
V36: 8-10
V35: 9-12
V34: 7-11

Keep in mind that these are out of the 28 Verbal questions that count
HiLine, Could you please modify the above table? I've seen examples of a V41 and V40 with as many as 10 wrong.

The Quant tables need to modified significantly as well. I have seen scores as low as Q42, for example, with only 9 questions wrong.

Thanks,
-Brian

Brian, thanks for bringing these examples to my attention. I have indeed seen V40 for 9 questions wrong and have incorporated this data point into the table. The V41 score, isn't it for the new format? I am hesitant to mix the two formats together. As for the Quant part, I decided to set the score cutoff at 45 because that is already at the 60th percentile with about 10 wrong questions. Once we go down past this point the variation is so great that it is a futile exercise to report all the possibilities.
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HiLine

Brian, thanks for bringing these examples to my attention. I have indeed seen V40 for 9 questions wrong and have incorporated this data point into the table. The V41 score, isn't it for the new format? I am hesitant to mix the two formats together. As for the Quant part, I decided to set the score cutoff at 45 because that is already at the 60th percentile with about 10 wrong questions. Once we go down past this point the variation is so great that it is a futile exercise to report all the possibilities.
Sure, I understand not wanting to go below Q45 for practical reasons, but if you can score Q42 with only 9 questions wrong, then the low cutoff for Q45 must be even lower than currently indicated (6 or 7 wrong, for example, instead of the listed 10).

I understand that this is just conjecture until we collect more ESR data. However, in general it's safe to assume that the lower the score, the wider the range of potential questions wrong, which suggests that the ranges should be getting larger (not smaller) as section scores decrease, not the other way around.

In other words, it doesn't make sense for Q50 to have a wide range of 1-6 questions wrong, for example, while Q45 would have a narrow range of only 10-11 questions wrong. I would guess that in reality the range of Q45 is more like 6-12 questions wrong.

-Brian
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Hi mcelroytutoring

Can you please tell me what is the number of Question that could go wrong to get a 50-51 in Quant and 41-42 in Verbal in the new GMAT format.

Thanks!


mcelroytutoring
HiLine

Brian, thanks for bringing these examples to my attention. I have indeed seen V40 for 9 questions wrong and have incorporated this data point into the table. The V41 score, isn't it for the new format? I am hesitant to mix the two formats together. As for the Quant part, I decided to set the score cutoff at 45 because that is already at the 60th percentile with about 10 wrong questions. Once we go down past this point the variation is so great that it is a futile exercise to report all the possibilities.
Sure, I understand not wanting to go below Q45 for practical reasons, but if you can score Q42 with only 9 questions wrong, then the low cutoff for Q45 must be even lower than currently indicated (6 or 7 wrong, for example, instead of the listed 10).

I understand that this is just conjecture until we collect more ESR data. However, in general it's safe to assume that the lower the score, the wider the range of potential questions wrong, which suggests that the ranges should be getting larger (not smaller) as section scores decrease, not the other way around.

In other words, it doesn't make sense for Q50 to have a wide range of 1-6 questions wrong, for example, while Q45 would have a narrow range of only 10-11 questions wrong. I would guess that in reality the range of Q45 is more like 6-12 questions wrong.

-Brian
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Hi mcelroytutoring

Can you please tell me what is the number of Question that could go wrong to get a 50-51 in Quant and 41-42 in Verbal in the new GMAT format.

Thanks!
Hi Adi93,

Sure.

51Q: 0-2 wrong out of the 28 counted questions.
50Q: 1-6 wrong

41-42V: about 4-6 wrong out of the 30 counted questions.

-Brian
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HiLine

5. Impact of number of questions wrong on scores



These are the rough ranges for the number of questions people have got wrong to achieve a certain score:

Q51: 0-2
Q50: 1-6
Q49: 4-8
Q48: 6-9
Q47: 7-11
Q46: 9-10
Q45: 10-11

Keep in mind that these are out of the 30 Quant questions that count

V50: 0
V48: 1
V47: 2
V46: 2-3
V44: 3-5
V42: 4-5
V41: 4-6
V40: 7-10
V38: 8-11
V37: 8-10
V36: 8-10
V35: 9-12
V34: 7-11

Keep in mind that these are out of the 28 Verbal questions that count


HiLine
I think the statements should be :

Keep in mind that these are out of the 28 Quant questions that count

Keep in mind that these are out of the 30 Verbal questions that count
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HiLine

5. Impact of number of questions wrong on scores



These are the rough ranges for the number of questions people have got wrong to achieve a certain score:

Q51: 0-2
Q50: 1-6
Q49: 4-8
Q48: 6-9
Q47: 7-11
Q46: 9-10
Q45: 10-11

Keep in mind that these are out of the 30 Quant questions that count

V50: 0
V48: 1
V47: 2
V46: 2-3
V44: 3-5
V42: 4-5
V41: 4-6
V40: 7-10
V38: 8-11
V37: 8-10
V36: 8-10
V35: 9-12
V34: 7-11

Keep in mind that these are out of the 28 Verbal questions that count


Hi! Could you please tell me whether this analysis is still valid (after the GMAT has changed in April 2018).
Shouldn't the two statements be flipped? I.e. Verbal should have 30 questions that count (instead of the above stated 28) and Quant should have 28 questions that count (instead of the above stated 30).
Correct me if Im wrong! :)
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HiLine

5. Impact of number of questions wrong on scores





Keep in mind that these are out of the 28 Verbal questions that count


Hi! Could you please tell me whether this analysis is still valid (after the GMAT has changed in April 2018).
Shouldn't the two statements be flipped? I.e. Verbal should have 30 questions that count (instead of the above stated 28) and Quant should have 28 questions that count (instead of the above stated 30).
Correct me if Im wrong! :)

HiLine should correct the original statement. The correct statement should be :Verbal have 30 questions that count and Quant have 28 questions that count
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Adrianmuger1
Hi! Could you please tell me whether this analysis is still valid (after the GMAT has changed in April 2018).
Shouldn't the two statements be flipped? I.e. Verbal should have 30 questions that count (instead of the above stated 28) and Quant should have 28 questions that count (instead of the above stated 30).
Correct me if Im wrong! :)
You're right about the number of questions that count, and that actually helps answer your first question. The change in the total number of questions did not affect the scored portion of the GMAT at all (details here). That means ESRs were also not affected by that change.
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That's right. And that is because people are still applying with GMAT scores from before the change was made, and therefore the GMAT scores should be comparable and give the same information about the test takers level to the schools.
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Hi GMAT Club experts,

I recently appeared for the GMAT and scored a 720 (Q50 V37). I got my hands on the ESR today and it seems I got only 5 verbal questions incorrect and still ended up with a V37. It seems to be very far off from what has HiLine compiled. Any idea why this might occur? Happy to share my ESR if it helps.

mcelroytutoring AjiteshArun
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GMATSlayer99
Hi GMAT Club experts,

I recently appeared for the GMAT and scored a 720 (Q50 V37). I got my hands on the ESR today and it seems I got only 5 verbal questions incorrect and still ended up with a V37. It seems to be very far off from what has HiLine compiled. Any idea why this might occur? Happy to share my ESR if it helps.
Hi GMATSlayer99, yes, please do share your ESR with the community.

Unfortunately, HiLine's estimates in the original post are now outdated. I have recently seen ESR examples of V42 with 2 wrong, V41 with 3 wrong, and V39 with 4 wrong, so I am not super-surprised to hear that you earned a V37 with only 5 counted questions wrong.



While it is of course true that question difficulty level is factored into the GMAT's scoring in addition to the number incorrect, it nonetheless appears that the already tough GMAT Verbal scoring curve has become even tougher.

You can also check out this post of mine for more info and updated Verbal score estimates: https://gmatclub.com/forum/from-v46-to- ... 54776.html

-Brian
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The score, number of incorrect answers and difficulty are all tied together.

Looking at the ESR with 2-3 wrong and V42, the difficulty never got above medium.

It seems the issue is the lack of hard questions on the test. I don’t think that’s the test taker‘s fault but rather the lack of hard questions available to the GMAC. That’s concerning… seems there are issues with supply. The test on the other hand, it’s simply adjusts to the questions available and similarly adjust the scoring. I’ll be very curious what kind of score one would get if they answered all the questions correctly. I wouldn’t be surprised if it would not be Q 51 since they would not get really hard questions. That would be not good….

So I would suggest that it’s not the grading curve or anything like that but rather the situation with availability of hard verbal questions that is concerning.

Posted from my mobile device
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GMATSlayer99
Hi GMAT Club experts,

I recently appeared for the GMAT and scored a 720 (Q50 V37). I got my hands on the ESR today and it seems I got only 5 verbal questions incorrect and still ended up with a V37. It seems to be very far off from what has HiLine compiled. Any idea why this might occur? Happy to share my ESR if it helps.

mcelroytutoring AjiteshArun
Hi GMATSlayer99,

Unfortunately, that's something I've seen happen to quite a few people now, among both my own students and test takers here on GMAT Club. I think that the GMAT question pool was (still is?) under a lot of pressure because of the need to create the GMAT Online exam. As bb mentioned, it's possible that the GMAT just didn't have enough hard questions to give you. Not your fault, but there's very little that can be done about it.

Congratulations on the 720. That's still a great score.
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Just had a student get a 710, 48Q 40V.

ESR shows:

7 total misses in verbal
--3 of the first 8, Medium
--1 of the next 7, High-Medium
--2 of the next 7, Barely more than medium
--1 of the last 8, High-medium



6 misses in quant
--2 of the first 7, high
--2 of the next 7, high-medium
--1 of the next 7, high-medium
--1 of the last 7, high medium




These--particularly the verbal--seem to show that missing questions (even easier questions) early can be recovered from by performing well at the end.
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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.'
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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.'
Thank you, Reed, for sharing. (And thanks to your student for ostensibly having been willing to share.) I hope you can post the image you referenced so that we all may benefit. I agree with your conclusion that, based on ESR data, the first-questions-matter-more hypothesis seems inaccurate (or, perhaps, outmoded).

- Andrew
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