GMAT percentile doesn't make sense?

Question

Hi,

I just took the GMAT today (in Osaka, Japan). The unofficial score report shows quant at 47 (77%) and verbal at 35 (73%), with total score at 680 (85%). How is the cumulative percentile greater than the individual percentiles? 
Looking up the percentiles on GMAT's official website shows the same trend: 75%, 81%, 88%. Could somebody explain this to me?

Thanks

AmrithS · Answer

The link between the Quant/Verbal raw score and the total score has not been established. We can only guess.

But consider this:
With increasing number of Asian Students taking the test, the number of people who do extremely well in Quant has increased dramatically. However, since these students are non-native English speakers, their verbal scores are not very high. Thus, high quant score and mediocre verbal score is not a rare combination.
Now, if a person performs extremely well in verbal and moderately well in quant, GMAT rewards the person with a better total score because the combination is not very common.
Furthermore, if the quant and verbal percentile are close, GMAT again rewards the test taker because the score represents equal extent of proficiency in both sections.

This is why the overall percentile for you you is greater than the percentiles in quant and verbal!

Same was my case...
Quant - 48
82 percentile!
Verbal - 40
89 percentile
Total - 710
92 percentile!

Same was my case... Quant - 48 82 percentile! Verbal - 40 89 percentile Total - 710 92 percentile!

Wishbone · Answer

just as a 70/70 split put you in to the 80th percentile, an 80/80 split would put you in to the 90th

gmatabc123 · Answer

thanks for the explanations...that helped!

tbull · Answer

I have to disagree with Entwistle on that. I think the scoring has little to do with how rare certain score combinations are, or how close your two scores are to each other, but has a lot to do with how well you did compared to other test-takers.

I think Entwistle was hinting at the correct explanation, but didn't get it exactly right. To explain, you scored in the 77th percentile in quant along with hundreds of others. Of those hundreds of others who got your same score, most of them probably scored worse than you did on the verbal portion of the test. The other way around works too. Most of the people who got your same score on verbal probably did worse than you on quant.

Taking it one step further, there are even people who scored better than you did in one section, but significantly worse than you did in the other. All of the people described above would have gotten a worse composite score than you did.

Since it is somewhat rare to score well on both sections of the test, two good scores in verbal and quant can add up to a great composite score.

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GMAT percentile doesn't make sense?

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