Understanding GMAT scoring algorithm (41 w/ 6 questions wrong)

It's more unusual to get a V40 with 11 wrong answers than it is to get a V41 with six wrong answers. But the number of wrong answers isn't very strongly correlated with your score, except when that number is extremely low or extremely high. One of your tests was harder, overall, then the other, and that meant the wrong answers didn't hurt you as much. Notice that the scoring 'works' - even though one test was harder, your scores were essentially the same, because the algorithm accounts for the fact that hard questions will be answered incorrectly more often.

Question difficulty isn't completely predictable on the GMAT. That's especially true on the Exam Pack tests, which are built from a small question database. My impression is that some of those tests just don't have many very hard questions to deliver to the high-level test taker. So you can't afford many mistakes on some of those tests if you want a top score. But you won't make as many, because the questions are easier than normal, so you'll still get roughly the same score.

If you're aiming for a 99th percentile Verbal score, you'll probably need to get down to four or fewer wrong answers. At that level, there is a clear correlation between wrong answers and scores (on most tests, with one wrong answer, the score is V49 or V50, and with two wrong answers it's V47 or V48). I think it's hard to improve on very high Verbal scores, and your current score is outstanding, but maybe by analyzing your errors you can make some further progress. Good luck!

Ian, thanks. This was the type of post I was looking for, this is really insightful. Do you know how big (roughly) the questions banks are for the practice test on the GMAC software?

Any ideas what % of the hard questions you have to be getting right in order to get certain scores?

thanks.

Questions like this don't have an exact answer. The difficulty level of questions is measured on a continuum, so no two questions are the same. It also will matter a lot how you perform on easier questions - it becomes very hard to get high scores if you get some easier questions wrong.

I don't know exactly how many questions are in the current GMATPrep tests - I've seen some numbers reported on this forum, but I don't know how reliable they are (or even where they came from). But if you take the tests several times, you at least get an impression of the size of the question bank, just by how quickly you start seeing repeat questions.

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