Q83 with Two Questions Wrong - How?

Question

Hi all,

Took the exam for the second time on Monday and got a 685 (Q83 V85 DI 84). I assume I made a dumb mistake or two in quant but I checked my score report and I only missed two questions, the 16th and the 21st.

I didn't miss any early questions or multiple in a row, I got 15 correct in a row, and I didn't go back and change any of my answers. I genuinely don't understand how this is a Q83. Would love to hear people's thoughts on this. Thanks!

Aarushi225 · Answer

How much did you score?

bb · Answer

Sorry. That sucks.

What do you think about 80 with 1? 😵🥴 https://gmatclub.com/forum/only-1-q-wro ... 32984.html That's the most insane score I have seen yet.

GmatKnightTutor · Answer

The Understanding Your Score page on the MBA website mentions "three factors" Quant scores are based on you could check out. If you have the current official-guide, for example, the myth vs. fact info could be interesting to read as well. You could also check out debriefs by others who've scored a Q83 to get a further sense what types of performances can get that score.

ashish2023_ · Answer

It seems that many people are scoring perfectly in the Quant section, so even a single mistake is significantly impacting the score.

bb · Answer

it’s an interesting theory.
I know originally, GMAT was trying to get away from the benching up of the scores such as Q51. Q49 was 79th percentile.... But I think that attempt, they have really created some questions 😬

Posted from my mobile device

kabirgandhi · Answer

I faced a similar issue, although I got 3 wrong on my test (Q9, Q11, Q16), completely spaced out, and definitely all at least medium-hard, and got a Q83.

In my mocks, I got a Q83 once when I got 5-6 wrong, with there being 2 consecutive errors.

The opacity of the scoring algorithm at times seems frustrating. I feel like the errors I made might have been on marked questions, whereas some of the ones I got right in strings might have been on experimental questions.

Is there any resolution/re-evaluation criteria that GMAC has in these cases? If the questions I got right were experimental and not marked as heavily as the ones I got wrong, shouldn't our scores & percentiles change as the question gets adopeted more widely?

bb   n1ckname

AjiteshArun · Answer

Hi kabirgandhi,

Experimental questions work differently. Getting an experimental question right (or wrong) makes  absolutely no difference  to your score. If you want to learn more about experimental questions, here's  an article  that you could go through. Here's how it works:

Present experimental question -> Gather data and identify problems -> If problems, fix and repeat earlier steps -> release as a live question in the question pools

After the last step, the question doesn't become a live question for the people who saw it as an experimental question (past). It'll be a live question only for the people who see it after it was made a live question (future).

For what it's worth, I too got a Q83 with only 3 mistakes (#9, 15, 21). That was just painful.

kabirgandhi · Answer

Thanks for the detailed explanation.

Hypothetically - If I get 19 scored questions on my test, and 2 experimental.

I could get all 19 scored correctly and get 2 easy (though the difficulty is perceived at this point) experimental ones incorrect, still scoring the 100th percentile, while someone who gets 21/21 correct gets the same score as me?

Similarly, it could be the case that out of the 18/21 questions I got right, 2-3 were experimental, so my actual number of correct questions is 15-16/18-19, whereas the ones I got wrong are scored, thus decreasing my percentile.

Surely, there should be a better way of testing question difficulty without leaving test takers confused by their scores.

AjiteshArun · Answer

You're absolutely correct about both the situations you outlined. And yes, because the ESR doesn't identify/exclude experimental questions, there's a lot of scope for confusion here. GMAC will probably point to test security as the reason, but that doesn't change the fact that this remains a problem for test takers.

kabirgandhi · Answer

Never thought this would be the case, but the practice tests are a better predictor of one's ability than the official test. Weird.

Probably works in their favour; more unpredictability => higher retakes => higher revenue?

AjiteshArun · Answer

Yes, the practice tests  can  be a better predictor, but there's one major advantage that the real test has: larger question pools (the real GMAT can usually give us "better-fit" questions). But yes, the fewer questions the test has, the harder it becomes for someone to bounce back after an error or even a silly mistake.

The more revenue point is interesting. Earlier, more people used to take the GMAT multiple times, at least from what I've seen over the years. But now, even though they've removed the lifetime limit, many GMAT test takers can and do switch to the GRE, especially if they're worried about quant.

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Q83 with Two Questions Wrong - How?

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