Penalties for not finishing the GMAT

Hi Sambhav,

While not answering those last 2 questions certainly led to a penalty (and lost you points), that's probably not the biggest issue with how you handled the Quant section. What was happening in the last 10-15 minutes BEFORE you ran out of time? If you had to rush through a lot of questions (meaning that you likely got most - if not all - of those questions wrong) and THEN you didn't answer the last 2 questions.... then that 'block' of questions (the last 2 and the ones that immediately preceded them) almost certainly would have led to a significant drop in your Score.

I assume that you're planning to retake the GMAT - and thankfully, Business Schools generally do not care if you retest (so doing so is NOT a big deal). Before we discuss how you might best proceed with your studies, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on how you've been studying and your goals:

Studies:
1) How did you Score on each of your Official GMATs (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores for EACH)?
2) How long have you studied? How many hours do you typically study each week?
3) What study materials have you used so far?
4) On what dates did you take EACH of your CATs/mocks and how did you score on EACH (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores for EACH)?

Goals:
5) What is your overall goal score?
6) When are you planning to apply to Business School?
7) What Schools are you planning to apply to?

You might also choose to purchase the Enhanced Score Report. While the ESR doesn’t provide a lot of information, there are usually a few data points that we can use to define what went wrong on Test Day (and what you should work on to score higher). If you purchase the ESR, then I'll be happy to analyze it for you.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

Hi all,

I understand that is is not exactly known how GMAC penalizes non completion. I just finished an adaptive Quant Test in the GMAT Club Tests and couldn't answer the last question. I ended up getting Q48. Can someone tell me how GMAT Club Tests penalize non completion?

Hi Ashwin_Krishnan,

Actually, we do have a reasonably good idea about the penalty. If you're interested in the penalty applied for leaving questions rather than guessing, you can take a look at this GMAC research document.

In most cases, the penalty for leaving one question is 0.


(a) 63.6% of all high ability test takers will not see any difference in their verbal scale score if they leave one question (instead of guessing)
(b) 28.1% will see their score drop by just one point
(c) 5.4% will see their score drop by 2 points
(d) 0.0% will see their score drop by 3 or more points
and
(e) 2.7% will actually see their score increase by 1 point

Remember that this is for leaving ("O") vs. guessing ("G"). Both result in a score drop (unless you guess correctly). We're looking only at the difference between the two score drops.

If you are also wondering a bit more about scoring on the GMAT, here is an article you can check out:

How Is the GMAT Exam Scored?

There is some myth vs. fact info in the beginning of the Official-Guide regarding the algorithm you may find interesting. If you were thinking of getting a guide, e-versions of the 2022 and 2023 guides are available on the MBA website.

-contact: www.gmatknight.com | gmatclub dm