What this means, "The GMAT exam contains...'.

Question

I was reading instructions before taking practice exam in GMAT prep software (2.4) and information section about scoring contained the following line which I do not fully understand. Does it mean that in real GMAT exam there will be questions in verbal, quantitative sections etc. that do not contain any scores?? Can any senior member please elaborate. Thanks in advance.

"The GMAT exam contain a number of questions that are being pretested for possible use in future tests. You will not know which questions are being pretested. Answer to these questions will not count toward your GMAT scores."

ccooley · Answer

That's exactly what it means. On the actual GMAT, there can be a number of questions that don't 'count' towards your final score. That's because the GMAC regularly tests out questions on actual test-takers. They compare how you did on those questions to how you did overall, to get a sense of how hard those questions are and whether they're good questions or not. You have no way of knowing whether a question is experimental or not when you're taking the test, so don't worry about it! But if you see a question that looks really weird (way too easy or way too hard) it may very well be experimental.

Twitter · Answer

Thanks for elaborating it, this means the number of scoring questions in each quantitative and verbal section is < 37.

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi Twitter,

Since you're allowed to retake the GMAT after 16 days, GMAC has to make sure that you face an entirely new set of questions. However, each of those new questions has to go through a rigorous 'testing process' before they're certified as "fair" and added to the pool of questions that you might face. The only practical way to test out those new questions is to place them in the actual GMAT, so that real Test Takers can respond to them and GMAC can gather the necessary statistical data to properly evaluate each question. The scored questions that you face on Test Day were once 'experimental' questions for someone else (and those questions did not count towards their scores); in that same way, your Exam will also include a series of experimental questions that will not count (and those questions will show up on someone else's Official GMAT later on).

The GMAC questions writers are pretty good at their jobs, and there's a set of 'standards' that all questions are measured against - in that way, experimental questions will look just like standard GMAT questions that count. As such, you won't be able to tell whether you're looking at an experimental question or not.

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

Twitter · Answer

Thanks  ccooley  and  EMPOWERgmatRichC  for explanation. Currently I have finished preparing for quantitative section. I can now almost solve all type of questions but the problem is that when I review myself on timer, on average I take more time as compared to time that will be given in real GMAT. How can I increase my speed? Is more and more practice in solving questions will increase my speed? Does the question in real GMAT are similar to those present in Official Guides? A piece of advice from you will be very helpful for me.

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi Twitter,

Depending on how you've studied and how you will continue to study, you might naturally speed up just from working through the repetitions. Your ability to recognize questions that remind you of questions that you've already answered should also allow you to get to work faster. That having been said, most GMAT questions can be approached in more than one way, so you have to be open to the idea that "your way" of approaching a prompt isn't necessarily the fastest way - so you might benefit by focusing on GMAT Tactics, pattern-matching skills, etc.

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

HKD1710 · Answer

Here is the Number of experimental questions divided in each of the 4 sets out of total questions in each section:

Quant-> 2/9 | 2/9 | 2/9 | 3/10 ------->  9 /37

Verbal-> 2/10 | 3/10 | 3/10 | 3/11 ------->  11 /41

Hence your score is based on  28  questions in Quant and  30  questions in verbal. In the exam you will never know which question is experimental.

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