GMAT in 1 month, help needed

Question

Hi All,

I have a maths background, wanted to understand the distribution of questions ( toughness wise) in quant section. 
If I am targeting 51 in quants, I wanted to understand out of total 31 questions in the section how many will fall in 700+ level and how many in 600-700 and 500-600 level?

TIA

akela · Answer

Hi  Genome ,

Welcome to gmatclub!

If you want to learn more about the GMAT scoring algorithm, chek out this thread:

GMAT Prep Software Scoring Analysis and What If Scenarios

Check this ESR to see the average difficulty:
 ESR Q51

I'd highly recommend to take a free official mock test to see where you stand:
 Exam Prep GMAT Official Starter Kit + Practice Exams 1 & 2 (Free)

Hope this helps!

rohan2345 · Answer

Hi Genome, Welcome to GMATCLUB! I would encourage you to read this post https://gmatclub.com/forum/the-ultimate ... 09801.html. I am sure you will find it very helpful. Hope this helps. All the best!

AjiteshArun · Answer

1. The 500, 600, 700 tag you see (anywhere, not just here) is an  estimate  of the actual difficulty of the question, and is subject to error.
2. The GMAT does not use the 200-800 scale to define the difficulty level of a question, so any comparison will necessarily require "lossy" translation.
3. The categories the GMAT reports in ESRs are also very broad ("medium", "medium high"...), so they are very limited in what they tell us.

This is to say that if you are targeting a Q51, you should study as well as you can, and use an official practice test to get an idea of how close you are to your target score. You will almost certainly have to either maintain perfect accuracy (worst-case scenario), or make at most 2 mistakes (best-case scenario).

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi Genome,

The GMAT is a CAT (Computer-Adaptive Test), so the difficulty-level of the questions you face is dependent on how well you are performing (and the questions that you get correct/incorrect as you work through the Quant and Verbal sections). Thus, there's no practical way to answer the question that you're asking. As it stands, many Test Takers become too fixated on the 'implied level' of the questions that they're working on - instead of what really matters: defining WHY they're getting questions wrong and becoming more efficient at approaching the overall Exam. It's also worth noting that just because a 3rd party describes a question as "700 level" does not necessarily make it so.

Before I can offer you any additional advice, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on how you've been studying and your goals:

Studies:
1) How long have you studied?
2) What study materials have you used so far?
3) How have you scored on EACH of your CATs (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores for EACH)?

Goals:
4) What is your overall goal score?
5) When is your exact Test Date?
6) When are you planning to apply to Business School?
7) What Schools are you planning to apply to?

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi Genome,

So, you ask a really good question. While you probably won’t get a definitive answer, I can give you some sense of what you would see in the process of scoring Q51.

Remember, no GMAT is the same as any other, meaning that the distribution of easy, medium, and hard questions is dependent on how you are doing on any particular exam. At the same time, since you would have to get almost all of the quant questions correct to score Q51, how your section would look is somewhat predictable.

Since the section starts off with medium-level questions, and you generally see harder questions as you answer correctly, you probably won't see any easy questions, though you might, in the beginning, see what you would consider some easier medium-level questions. As you progress through the section, you climb up in difficulty level, eventually seeing the most difficult questions that the quant section has to offer, but even once you get to a high level, not every question you see will be especially challenging. Along the way, you see some experimental questions, which can be of any difficulty level. So, for instance, right after your hardest question might be an easy experimental one.

Another factor that could affect how difficult the quant section feels for you is how the questions that you see match up with your strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes people feel that the easiest question (according to GMAC) that they see is difficult to answer because they are weak in that question's area of focus.

So, given all of the above, here is how a Q51 quant section tends to feel: For most people who are highly skilled in quant, the first few questions are pretty easy, unless one of those questions falls into a person's weaker areas. The questions get progressively harder but are not always especially hard. The difficulty level bounces around, and the person sees a mix of questions that seem to be medium-level, more difficult, and very difficult. As for how many of each level of difficulty a person sees, a good guess is perhaps 2 to 4 easier medium-level questions, 5 to 8 rather challenging, upper 700-level questions, and a bunch of questions that fall somewhere between those two types.

So, scoring Q51 does not take answering dozens of super-difficult questions, since you would see only a handful of the most difficult questions. That said, if you want to hit a Q51 on test day, you’ll need to dominate pretty much all questions that come your way, regardless of difficulty. So, your preparation for GMAT quant will have to be rather thorough. With that in mind, you may find it helpful to read this article about  how to improve your GMAT quant score .

Feel free to reach out with further questions.

Good luck!

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