Penalty for "Incomplete" Answer Choice | Can I change this in the test

Question

I have just completed the GMAT practice exam #3 and received a score of 36 on Quant. I got questions 2, 6, 17, 18, 20, 23, 24, 29, and 31 incorrect. However, I had my answer choice selected on the last question and as I let time run out it ultimately logged my answer as "Incomplete." I recognize that the number of questions answered correctly does not solely affect the score (as I had previously got a Q46 with 15 incorrect). However, I am curious how severe my penalty was for having one "Incomplete." My wrong answers were reasonably spaced out so I feel that my quant score should be much higher (given that my last answer is "Incorrect" as opposed to "Incomplete").

Does anyone know how much of a penalty this is AND/OR if I or a GMAT representative can go into my account and change question 31 from an "Incomplete" to an "Incorrect?"

Thank you!

Does anyone know how much of a penalty this is AND/OR if I or a GMAT representative can go into my account and change question 31 from an "Incomplete" to an "Incorrect?"

Thank you!

bb · Answer

Hi. The penalty for an incomplete answer is around three or 4 percentile points.

This is not the same as Q36, you would not add three or four points to get the Q 40 but instead you would calculate the percentile which happens to be 27th and then add three or four points to get 30th or 32nd percentile which would be Q 37 or Q 38. So it’s not that much difference for a single question.

PS. We have a pretty extensive and turning scientific discussion about penalties that I could find a link if I really wanted to but the bottom line is that you lose about 3 percentiles based on that discussion. That number may be closer to four since there was a reduction in the number of questions a few years ago since the discussion took place.

The penalty will likely increase further on the GMAT focus.

PS. As you have noticed correctly, GMAT does not save your answer unless you submit it. A long time ago it’s used to submit it for you but there was a change a number of years ago and at this point you need to submit an answer for it to count.

bb · Answer

PS. My understanding for the support and change of anything in the GMAT prep tests, it’s virtually nonexistent so chances of anyone doing anything I’m going to be slim to none.

One crazy idea - If you did not believe me or were determined enough, or both 😂 you could simulate one of the free tests and make mistakes in the same sequence of questions and see what score you will get

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gmatguru20 · Answer

Thank you for your reply.

However, I had not pressed submit on Practice Test #2 and my answer was not "Incomplete." Regardless, I feel like a Q37/Q38 is not indicative of the performance. With 9 wrong, and only two incorrects back to back, could that still come out to a Q38? Again, I had gotten 6 out of the first 10 right when I got a Q46 and preceded to get a total of 15 wrong. What is with this algorithm?!!

bb · Answer

Unfortunately the system and the algorithm and your final score do not depend on the number of mistakes.

You can make 10 mistakes in the test and still get a Q 50 or a Q 37 - you can see some fun we have had with GMAT prep.

https://gmatclub.com/forum/new-format-g ... 69682.html

Basically the score depends on the number of hard questions you answer correctly. This is a pretty confusing concept however. Ultimately, this means not making many mistakes in the first 10 questions of the test because that portion of the test has a big influence on determining your level and it’s very hard to recover if you fumble too many questions in that group.

It is surprising that you’re test number two did not mark it as incomplete even though you did not submit the question. My understanding is that not the behavior you will observe on the GMAT and that you should submit. I have tested this behavior a year ago using the free tests and the last question did not submit automatically. 🤷‍♂️

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gmatguru20 · Answer

Is there any way to see the breakdown of level of difficulty with each practice test question? I feel like more data should be available for these practice tests.

gmatguru20 · Answer

Right, but that is what I'm saying.

Questions:
1-10: 8/10
11-20: 7/10
21-31: 7/11

Q36... doesn't make sense.

Seems like I should have been rewarded with difficult questions following the first 10.

bb · Answer

Just dawned on me…. the reason for your score interpretation conundrum, paid GMAT prep tests (3, 4, 5, 6) have a bare-bones database of questions. For example, test three only contains 31 quantitative questions and they all get served during your test. This means it lacks the depth of having additional easy questions and it lacks the depth of having additional hard questions. As the result, the scoring algorithm has to adjust the best it can and therefore the number of mistakes and scores are not comparable in the paid tests and the free tests (1 and 2)

You probably should have seen more harder questions but there was not enough of them and you probably have made mistakes and some of the easier questions which penalized your score greater had the database had more hard questions.

So yes in my opinion the score is probably also not representative but in terms of the realities, you did miss a number of easy and medium questions so I cannot blame the algorithm either. Unfortunately we regularly have disparities on the paid GMAT prep test due to the database size issue and those disparities go both ways.

PS. There’s no way to see the difficulty of questions on the GMAT prep but you can look up the difficulty value in the GMAT Club timer. This would require you manually searching every single question however. If you do end up doing this, let me know and I need to give you a bit of guidance about the timer because we have quite a few hard questions on the forum and some of the hardest GMAT prep questions are probably going to be marked only at 55 or 65% in the Quant. There is not because they are easy but because there are harder questions.

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GmatKnightTutor · Answer

In the beginning of the Official-Guide (you can get an e-version from the MBA website), there is some myth vs. fact info you can check out that refers to the significant penalty for not finishing. Fair to say, however, even if that last question were marked correct, it wouldn't boost a score by 10 Quant points.

-contact: gmatknight site | gmatclub dm

-contact: gmatknight site | gmatclub dm

gmatguru20 · Answer

@bbcodes So effectively there is no algorithm for the quant section of Practice Test #3? Is this the case for 4,5,6? Might you know? It seems as though I was not awarded with any hard questions after getting only 2 of the first 15 or so questions wrong. Is this a fair analysis? Not trying to justify my low score, but am generally confused with how the gmat practice tests don't really simulate the real test in many instances.

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Penalty for "Incomplete" Answer Choice | Can I change this in the test

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