Your score remains the same. A 710 will NEVER go down to a 700. A Q47 might go from being 81st p.c. to 77th p.c., but you will still have a 710. Of course, a 710 might have been 93rd p.c. or something at a point in time, and might only be 91st p.c. now.
Matterhorn, that's a question that gets raised pretty often. No one quite knows how GMAC's scoring algorithm for the GMAT really works, so it's all speculative. But rjacobs is right in that you're compared to a pool comprising of all test takers within a specific time frame, and if a Q50 V41 is 99th p.c. when compared to that pool, then you get a 760, and if it's 97th p.c. then a 740 et cetera. The percentiles fluctuate all the time, albeit only slightly.
rjacobs wrote:
Hey matterhorn, my understanding is that the composite score takes percentile into account, and since percentiles fluctuate over time, so to the scores. So I could take the GMAT in March, score a 710, and then people might start doing better on the GMAT, so my score would go down to a 700 by June. If you request a new score report, your composite score will be recalculated based on what it is at that time (i.e. your score report will look different in June than in March). Schools know this, and won't care if there's a slight discrepancy as long as you report your raw scores accurately.