Understanding the percentiles

Question

Hi,

I took a GMAT focus practise test about a month ago and it went terribly bad. My score was 355 (DI 74, QR 62 and VR 67). A year ago I took the old GMAT practise test and my score was 555 (VR 24 and QR 41). Therefore, I'm hoping I just had a bad day when I did the last test (I have not been studying inbetween the two tests).

What I cannot understand is that in my score card it says that my VR result was in the 2nd percentile, however on my performance by question type my CR was in the 83rd percentile and RC was in the 50th percentile. How does that give a general score in the VR section in the 2nd percentile?

Thank you!

egmat · Answer

Those numbers are pretty wild. Did you leave questions unattempted in Verbal? Remember, your CR and RC percentiles take into account only those questions that you have attempted, while your Verbal percentile - a more precise measure - takes into account both the attempted and unattempted questions.

To elaborate further:
 The discrepancy between your overall Verbal percentile (2nd) and your individual CR (83rd) and RC (50th) percentiles is indeed striking. This situation typically arises when a significant number of questions are left unanswered.

The GMAT scoring system penalizes unanswered questions more heavily than incorrect answers. So if you ran out of time and left several questions blank, it could dramatically lower your overall Verbal score, even if you performed well on the questions you did answer.

How are you planning to improve your Verbal score?

sahilsahh · Answer

did you miss questions in the verbal

tulee · Answer

Did you miss any questions and how many did you get wrong?

findus · Answer

Thank you for your reply!

I answered all but one question on the VR section. 12 out of 20 questions were correct. However, I answered question 2-4 incorrectly so don't know if that maybe affected the overall score.

I have mostly been working on my Quant score since I know I can do better in that section. For Verbal I've gone through Manhattan's Foundation of Verbal and planning to also work through the All the Verbal (and skipping Sentence Correction). I already do all my reading in English (I am not a native English speaker). I am also planning to work on my time management. I have been reading a couple of guides here and on Atlas for time management.

Seems like improving the Verbal score takes a lot more work than Quant.

tulee · Answer

Same! I'm reading the Manhattan prep books and found them super helpful. They're like textbooks haha

bb · Answer

Would you mind posting a screenshot by the way?

Posted from my mobile device

AjiteshArun · Answer

Hi findus,

This does look strange, but generally speaking, the scores/percentiles for individual question types or content areas like CR and RC are not reliable.

findus · Answer

Here are screen shots of the score report for Verbal.

https://gmatclub.com/forum/download/file.php?id=82666 https://gmatclub.com/forum/download/file.php?id=82667 https://gmatclub.com/forum/download/file.php?id=82668 https://gmatclub.com/forum/download/file.php?id=82669 https://gmatclub.com/forum/download/file.php?id=82670 GMAT-Club-Forum-46udsoz7.png GMAT-Club-Forum-accyw8so.png GMAT-Club-Forum-gjj2whc6.png GMAT-Club-Forum-7deohqir.png GMAT-Club-Forum-7a64bptm.png

findus · Answer

Hi,

I have taken another two test since my first practice test.

Test 1: VR 67, QR 62, DI 74. Total score 355
Test 2: VR 79, QR 70, DI 68. Total score 455
Test 3: VR 64, QR 72, DI 73. Total score 395

I am aiming to get a 555 but these scores are obviously very disappointing and I am struggling a lot with time management.

Furthermore, I cannot understand that I am scoring 64 on verbal. I got 11 out of 18 questions right and left one question unanswered.

This is my performance on fundamental skills and question type. How can I end up in the 1st percentile on verbal?

Can anyone recommend a good tutor to especially help with time management. I am in the CEST time zone.

Feels like I am never going to get my scores up to be able to apply to business school...

GmatKnightTutor · Answer

For time management, using question/time markers may help a bit. When reviewing Quant questions, for example, seeing whether there may have been shorter/easier ways to get to the correct answer choice could also be helpful.

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

So, I can understand why you may think you have a time management issue for GMAT verbal, but those time management issues will be fixed as you improve your verbal skills. Thus, here is some advice on how to do so.

To increase your verbal score to a higher level, you have to go through GMAT verbal carefully to find your exact weaknesses, fill gaps in your knowledge, and strengthen your skills. The overall process will be to find weaker areas, learn all about how to answer questions of types that you aren't that comfortable with now, and do dozens of practice questions category by category, basically driving your score up point by point.

For example, assume you begin studying Critical Reasoning. Your first goal is to master the individual Critical Reasoning topics: Strengthen the Argument, Weaken the Argument, Resolve the Paradox, etc. As you go through the questions, do a thorough analysis of each question that you don't get correct. If you missed a Weaken question, ask yourself why you didn't get it right. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not recognize what the question was asking? Did you skip over a key detail in an answer choice? Getting GMAT verbal questions right is a matter of what you know, what you see, and what you do. So, any time that you don't get one right, you can seek to identify what you would have had to know in order to get the right answer, what you had to see that you didn't see, and what you could have done differently to arrive at the correct answer.

Regarding RC, when students get those questions wrong, it’s partly because they don't truly understand what they have just read. To understand what you are reading, you may have to slow down even more (for now) in order to eventually speed up. You have to learn to comprehend what you read, keep it all straight, and use what you are reading to arrive at correct answers.

At this point, your best bet is to focus on getting the correct answers to questions, taking **as much time as you need** to see key details and understand the logic of what you are reading. If you don't understand something, go back and read it one sentence at a time, even one word at a time, not moving on until you understand what you have just read. There is no way around this work. Your goal should be to take all the time you need to understand exactly what is being said and arrive at the correct answer. If you can learn to get answers taking your time, you can learn to speed up. Answering questions is like any task: The more times you do it carefully and successfully, the faster you become at doing it carefully and successfully.

Another component to understanding what you are reading is being “present” when reading. Don’t worry about how things are going at work, or what you will eat for dinner, or even how long you’re taking to read through the passage. Just focus on what is in front of you, word by word, line by line. Furthermore, try to make reading fun. For example, even if you are reading about a topic that bores you, pretend that you are the person making the argument. By doing so, you will make the passage more relatable to YOU, and ultimately you should be able to read with greater focus.

One final component of Reading Comprehension that may be tripping you up is that RC questions contain one or more trap answers that seem to answer the question but don't really. So, a key part of training to correctly answer RC questions is learning to notice the differences between trap answers and correct answers. You have to learn to see how trap answers seem to follow from what the passages say, but don't really, while correct answers fit what the passages say exactly. Of course, the better you become at noticing the differences between trap answer choices and correct answers, the faster you will answer RC questions.

Here is also a great article that you can check out:

How to Score High on GMAT Verbal on the Focus Edition

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