Okay, hear me out.
I have heard people continuously tell me that the first few questions do not matter more than the rest of the questions. But from my experimentation, I seriously consider that as false.
I have taken a total of 6 practice exams. For the sake of this discussion, I will only talk about my latest 5 (since the first one was my initialization exam and because my first one was
Manhattan Prep while the last five were GMAT Prep).
For the last 5 exams I have taken, I have consistently scored a quant score of 46 or higher, EXCEPT for the very last one I took; on the last one I took, I got a quant score of 39, a complete outlier.
I put my investigation hat on and started looking into why this might be.
On my latest exam, I got a total of 9 questions wrong, three of them being the first three questions on the exam (makes me wonder, what score would I have gotten had I gotten the other 6 right).
On all my other exams (from the last 5 exams), I got at least the first three questions right (that is, got 3 or more of the first questions right before getting a wrong one).
On one of the exams, I got 8 wrong and scored a 46 but with the first three correct (8 wrong was the lowest amount of questions I got wrong on any of the exams).
So, I'm calling it, I think the first few questions do matter more, and that a little extra time should be spent on getting them right. Of course, do not take too much time on them; that might screw you over at the end as you will get many wrong in a row.
As a disclaimer, on my better performing tests, I have gotten 3 wrong in a row mid-test, so I do not think the reduction in my latest score was because I got many wrong in a row at the beginning.
Also, the claim that "getting many right in a row will do wonders for your score since you would be promoted to harder questions" is also false in my opinion. In my latest exam, I had a correct streak of 13 questions.
Anyways, I am not entirely mad, I have received consistently good scores to the point where this outlier means not very much to me. BUT, I have learned something from this experience, and ultimately, that is what matters
For reference, the questions I got wrong on my latest exam for quant are 1, 2, 3, 7, 11, 25, 28, 29, 31 (you can see that at 28 I started to hit a time crunch lol; I need to work on that as well).
In my opinion, this is NOT the correct way to administer standardized exams.
ACTION ITEM: from your experience, have you experienced the same phenomenon? Am I crazy, or have you guys seen this as well?