V42 with only two questions incorrect

Question

Hello,

I gave my GMAT a couple of days back in which I got V42 with only two questions marked incorrect and that too in the 4th quarter. Though I reached my target score of 760, I still cannot wrap my head around getting such a low score with only two mistakes.

Does anyone have any idea why I got this score?

AjiteshArun · Answer

Hi  mehulsinghal98 ,

The most likely reason is that you received a bunch of easy questions. Here are some similar ESRs:  1  and  2 .

mcelroytutoring · Answer

Hi  mehulsinghal98 ,

Someone posted on Reddit yesterday about the exact same issue...was that you also? That person also answered only two questions wrong, both in the final quarter, yet "only" earned a V42 score (96%), losing 9 points off their Verbal score (out of 51) in the process.

https://www.drivecms.com/uploads/mcelroytutoring.com/Screen%20Shot%202021-08-21%20at%207.52.53%20PM.png

Are you sure that you definitely finished the Verbal section? Do you think there is a chance you may have neglected to confirm the final answer, and thus incurred the penalty for not finishing?

That said, having recently seen a 3-wrong V41, as  AjiteshArun  has already noted, I suppose it's not super-shocking to see a 2-wrong V42, but still, V42 usually correlates to 4-5 wrong, and I've never seen a V42 score with only 2 wrong before.

https://www.drivecms.com/uploads/mcelroytutoring.com/Screen%20Shot%202021-08-21%20at%207.58.45%20PM.png

On the other extreme, we have seen scores of as low as V28 (50%) with as few as 9 questions wrong, and scores as high as V40 with as many as 10 questions wrong, so clearly, the adaptive scoring algorithm can still make a big difference on Verbal, even if the algorithm's influence isn't as obvious as it is on Quant.

https://www.drivecms.com/uploads/mcelroytutoring.com/ESR.png

https://www.drivecms.com/uploads/mcelroytutoring.com/Screen%20Shot%202021-08-21%20at%208.09.04%20PM.png

Note: When I refer to "questions wrong," I am obviously referring to  counted questions only : every GMAT Verbal section has 6 uncounted, experimental questions.

mehulsinghal98 · Answer

Yes the first one is my ESR only. 
I did not confirm the last question in verbal. Had no idea it is not considered marked if you dont confirm.

Last question was of SC. So this also explains 81 percentile in SC on only one incorrect question.

Posted from my mobile device

mcelroytutoring · Answer

Hi  mehulsinghal98 ,

Aha, we have discovered the problem, which is that you did not confirm the final answer of the Verbal section, thus making the question automatically incorrect + triggering the penalty for not finishing.

Just to confirm, does the blue "Summary" part of your ESR say "You completed 35 questions in the Verbal section," or "You completed 36 questions in the Verbal section"?

https://www.drivecms.com/uploads/mcelroytutoring.com/Screen%20Shot%202021-08-22%20at%202.18.57%20PM.png

By the way, your issue had nothing to do with difficulty level, as so many others seem to think: even perfect V51 ESR average difficulty charts never go very high, because it is just that—an  average .

https://www.drivecms.com/uploads/mcelroytutoring.com/Screen%20Shot%202021-08-22%20at%207.11.44%20AM.png  
Unfortunately, I have more bad news for you: if you had simply confirmed that last answer on Verbal—whether or not you answered it correctly—then you would have avoided the guessing penalty and likely scored V44 at worst, V49 at best.

There are two key takeaways here: 1) yes, you have to confirm even the final answer, and 2) there is a "significant" penalty for not finishing, according to GMAC.

https://www.drivecms.com/uploads/mcelroytutoring.com/Screen%20Shot%202021-08-22%20at%207.14.10%20AM.png

-Brian

AjiteshArun · Answer

Hi  mcelroytutoring ,

There's a lot that I disagree with in your post, but I wanted to point out that the GMAC has mentioned in its meetings with test prep professionals that the penalty is nowhere near as great as you seem to think it is. I absolutely ask my students to complete the quantitative and verbal sections, but I am concerned that a test taker may be left with the wrong impression after reading your post, as it seems to paint the GMAT as being unfair. To be very clear, I don't think that your position (that massive score drops in the verbal section can be attributed solely to leaving one question) is correct.

There's a  GMAC research document  in the public domain that says the same thing the GMAC says privately, but it's from 2009. I expect you are aware that the GMAT algorithm hasn't changed, so the numbers below should be what we'd expect given the same question pool.

(a) 63.6% of all high ability test takers  will not see any difference  in their verbal scale score if they leave one question (instead of guessing)
(b) 28.1% will see their score drop by just one point
(c) 5.4% will see their score drop by 2 points
(d) 0.0% will see their score drop by 3 or more points
and
(e) 2.7% will actually see their score  increase  by 1 point

I'd be happy to hear your take on this.

mcelroytutoring · Answer

To be conservative, I will revise my estimate to V44-V49 had OP confirmed the last question on Verbal, but I stand by the rest of my statements.

The phrase "significant penalty" is GMAC's language, not mine. GMAC has also gifted us with an excellent example: failing to answer 5 questions can drop your score from V40 (90%) to V35 (75%). I don't know about you, but that sounds "significant" to me.

Thus, it's likely that OP lost at least one point on Verbal due to not finishing, and since scores of V43 are impossible, it's also likely that OP lost  at least two points  on their Verbal score.

bb · Answer

I have heard it a few times simplified down to 3 percentiles for missing questions which is not raw points but percentiles. And sometimes that may mean it wont even change the score….

PS. I do find it very odd to have V42 with only 2 incorrect answers. However the scoring may be adjusted for the difficulty of questions…. But I don’t want to venture into conjecture.

Posted from my mobile device

hykhan · Answer

had the same issue. Scored a V41 with only three questions incorrect, couldn't fathom why - even got 100% on sentence correction. I wonder if you got the two questions wrong in a row at the beginning of the last section, which would affect the difficulty of the remaining question. Who knows

AjiteshArun · Answer

Hi mcelroytutoring , That's a straw man. I'm pretty sure most test takers already know that leaving 5 questions is different from leaving 1 question.

For test takers: please do try to finish your quantitative and verbal sections, but if you're interested, here's one way to look at the "significant penalty" applied in the verbal section for leaving (" O ") vs. guessing (" G ").

vv65 · Answer

Any idea why the system would give him a bunch of easy questions at this point? 
He answered all questions correctly and must have been at the maximum difficulty level.
Is it that the system just ran out of hard questions?

An ESR like this makes me question everything I believe about GMAT scoring.

Posted from my mobile device

AjiteshArun · Answer

Hi  vv65 ,

I don't know why it would do that. And yes, ESRs like this one are quite strange, though I think (hope?) that they are more exception than rule.

ReedArnoldMPREP · Answer

You still get easier questions if you're scoring high, and if those are the two you miss... Welp. Plus not finishing, pretty good chance you'll get hit a point.

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V42 with only two questions incorrect

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