Horrible GMAT Focus Score Report Directory

Question

This is a collection of really no good, horrible and unfortunate GMAT Focus Scores people reporting. These are some of the worst examples of low scores with just a handful of mistakes. As more and more of these surface, it has come time to build a directory so we can start spotting patterns and figure out why these many be happening 😣

Quantitative:

1 Incorrect:

Q80 (64th percentile) with 1 wrong / 20 correct  (July 23, 2024) 
  Q81 (70th percentile) with 1 wrong / 20 correct  (Aug 30, 2024)

2 Incorrect:  
 
  Q80 (64th percentile) with 2 wrong / 19 correct  (July 19, 2024) 
  Q83 (81st percentile) with 2 wrong / 19 correct  (July 24, 2024)  
  Q79 (57th percentile) with 2 wrong / 19 correct  (Nov 20, 2024)

3 Incorrect:  
 
  Q74 (26th percentile) with 3 wrong / 18 correct  (Feb 17, 2025) 
  Q79 (57th percentile) with 3 wrong / 18 correct  (Dec 28, 2023)  
  Q76 (37th percentile) with 3 wrong / 18 correct  (Oct 16, 2024)

4+ Incorrect:  
 
  Q76 (37th percentile) with 5 wrong / 16 correct  (Aug 28, 2024)  
  Q76 (37th percentile with 4 wrong / 17 correct  (Apr 27, 2025)

Verbal:   
 
  V78 (39th percentile) with 6 RC and 3 CR wrong  (Oct 16, 2024) 
  V76 (23rd percentile) with 8 wrong / 15 correct  (Oct 11, 2024)

Data Insights:

Possible Explanations of this Phenomenon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lNHUxcWY4A

JBranner · Answer

Hello everyone,

I don't understand why I only got 77 on the Quantitative Section even though I only answered three questions wrong. It was the very first question, the tenth question, and the 19th question. Can someone explain this?

Thank you in advance.

bb · Answer

Welcome to the Horrible GMAT Focus Score Report directory where I collect these really annoying stories. 
I will PM you about it for a bit more background.

Dbrunik · Answer

Yeah, I’m not sure if my account but I got an 84 on quantum and I only got one question wrong

Posted from my mobile device

bb · Answer

At least you got 85th percentile... that's a bummer but at least it is not 70th or smth silly like that. 
I am going to ask GMAC to see if they can provide some details and shed some light on why these scores happen. If you are interested, send me your screenshot of the Quant Section as well as the test number/ID so that my contact could look it up and research. You can PM me.

Thank you,
BB

Dbrunik · Answer

Sounds good I’m not sure if it matters, but in addition to this, I also was able to change all three of my optional answer changes from incorrect to correct

Posted from my mobile device

bb · Answer

Got this one via PM - Verbal

Verbal ESR with 15C 8W and scaled score of 76

MyNameisFritz · Answer

Hey bb,

Did an online exam on Monday, here are my results.

Q75 - 5 incorrect (shocked here)
V79 - 10 incorrect
DI79 - 10 incorrect

Quant section felt easy, and I got last 9 questions correct.

slp0824 · Answer

Hi bb, do you think the amount of time taken to answer a question is playing a role in the scoring now? I've often noticed when the time taken is higher and correct, the score is a little affect, and if incorrect then drastically affected. I got a Q80 with 3 incorrect in my last exam.

quantium17 · Answer

Is it possible the algorithm is taking into account time spent answering question? i.e. spending more time on a question than average and getting incorrect lowers difficulty even more and vice versa?

I am trying to find patterns with these ridiculous edge case quant scores and am wondering if anyone else sees any kind of pattern or correlation with time spent and overall score.

bb · Answer

Hi. Good thinking and good idea about very very very unlikely. I can tell you that I have not noticed any correlation in the GMAT prep exams. Nobody knows the reality of the actual gem Matic exam but I don’t see many reasons why GMAC would hide a critical piece of scoring information.

my leading theory, still unproven of course, so merely hypothesis is that the question bank was lacking hard questions. This may be partially coincidental. On the GMAT exam, you have to get a certain number of certain types of questions, for example on the verbal section, you need to get four reading comprehension passages, sometimes it may be three but it’s never less than three and it’s never more than four. simmer on the quant, you probably need to get some arithmetic questions and some algebra and some probability and combinations if you are getting up there in difficulty but if you answered probability and combinations in the exam and the exam had to serve you algebra questions and it did not have any hard algebra questions, it could only serve medium level difficulty. Similarly, if the question bank was not loaded with enough of difficult questions of all, something with this may happen.

However, this theory may prove complete bollocks as we are hoping to speak to a team within the GMAC that knows how scoring works to help us explain some of these very unusual results. However the timeline for this is keep getting pushed out and I think the earliest is going to be January 👀

AjiteshArun · Answer

Hi quantium17,

For the previous GMAT, that was definitely not the case (confirmed directly by GMAC). But yes, maybe we should ask them directly whether anything has changed with respect to this.

Sarthak1012 · Answer

Hi bb , Experienced the same in Quant https://gmatclub.com/forum/gmat-result- ... l#p3485361 Makes it to just Q79 - 2 incorrect - 19 correct - 57th percentile Details mentioned in post above - seems to be a new low for quant

bb · Answer

Thank you for posting this! UGH. This is pretty frustrating. I am sorry!!! 
P.S. We are working on getting some explanations and it seems we may get them but based on the current pace it seems only in Jan/Feb 😭

btheche · Answer

Hi all, I faced the same issue in verbal. I got 15 question correct and got 8 wrong. What is incredible is that the last six questions out of seven were right. I am wondering if I was not penalized for the amount of time spent on each question. My percentile was 18th.

btheche · Answer

https://gmatclub.com/forum/download/file.php?id=83197 GMAT-Club-Forum-s2619mpb.png

bb · Answer

Wow. That is an amazing level of luck! I don’t know what you’re doing wasting your time on the GMAT, you should be in Vegas!

Sorry, that’s a terrible joke and I apologize. You got a score of 75 which it doesn’t matter what percentile it is, the points still matter and up, you got half the maximum points. This is the good news, But the percentile ranking indicates that pretty much 80% of people have gotten higher score and answered better than you which are two separate parameters.

gmat612025 · Answer

Took the test today and scored 74 (26%) in the Quant section with 6 questions wrong. Sure, 2 of them were early on, but damn, 26% :/// the algorithm kept giving me easy questions although it was my first section

Attachments

0A07948C-B3F7-45AD-9035-6E2733866A68.png [ 90.62 KiB | Viewed 755 times ]

bb · Answer

Thank you for sharing! 
Sorry! Tis is pretty rough.

In my experiments with GMAT Prep, I did not see as much difference or impact when making mistakes early on. I have made as many as 6 in a row in the start, middle and end and generally received similar scores so my guess it is not the order of questions.

bb · Answer

By the way, a video on this topic went up on GMAT Club Channel today. I hope it helps wrap our minds around it. I am excited to watch it (have not had the time yet)

Why super-low Scores on the GMAT Focus with just 1-2 wrong answers?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lNHUxcWY4A

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