Asking for advice to improve my GMAT test taking strategy

[IzzyL681]

Hello,

I have some queries regarding testing strategies for the GMAT. I have attempted 2 CAT exams thus far and noted the following:

1) For my CAT 2 exam, I encountered 3/31 level 700-800 Quant questions, and 26/36 level 700-800 Verbal questions. Overall, I got 18/31 correct answers for Quant and 20/36 correct answers for Verbal. In the end, I scored Q43 and V34.
However, the discrepancy between 3 and 26 just seems too large, I got almost 10x more difficult questions in Verbal but scored much higher in Quant.

2) As previously mentioned, for my CAT 2 exam I encountered 26/36 level 700-800 Verbal questions and scored V34. For my CAT 1 exam, I encountered 19/36 level 700-800 Verbal questions and scored V35.
Not as drastic as Quant vs Verbal, but 7 more difficult questions is quite substantial. However, I did answer more questions correctly near the end for CAT 1 as compared to CAT 2, and that likely played a large part in my final score.

I understand that the scores for the Quant and Verbal sections use the same number range but the scale itself is not actually the same, and that the GMAT is an adaptive "where you end is what you get" test. With this in mind:

With regards to 1), is it the case that it is just much harder to score in Verbal overall? Otherwise, it seems that I am getting a higher score for Quant because the questions were easier (only 3 difficult questions!). Do I need to focus more study efforts towards Verbal and successfully score for much harder questions for it as compared to Quant in order to get a higher score?

With regards to 2), would it be a better strategy to go faster at the start and spend more time getting the second half of the questions correct since "where you end is what you get"? From my experience in these 2 CATS, it seemed to not matter that I was getting much of the difficult questions right in the middle.

I hope that you may advice me on what is a good strategy to use to prepare for the GMAT exam going forward based on these experiences that I just had. Thank you!

[StaceyKoprince]

Hi! Welcome to the forums.

Yes, the algorithm for an adaptive test is really weird—what you've described is totally normal for this algorithm. The test is not scored based on # correct and your score is also not an average of your performance across the section. So two people can have very different data and yet still get the same score in the same section.

Also, because the scoring scales are not actually the same, you didn't get a higher score on the Quant section. A V score of 34 reflects a higher percentile ranking than a score of 43 on Q. In general, it's not meaningful to compare the Q and V scores or sections to each other; they just don't work the same way.

Here's how I'd recommend thinking about your scores. In practice, the effective highest V score is 45 (it's very unusual to score higher than 45). Also, just to make things even more confusing, they don't use a score of V43 at all—it just skips from V42 to V44. You scored a 34 on V and the highest practical score is 45 (and you can't get 43)—so you have about 10 points that you could pick up on V.

On Q, the highest possible score is 51. You scored 43 on Q, so you have about 8 points that you could pick on on Q.

So you have just about the same number of points "available" from each section to help you lift your score, indicating that you'd want to spend roughly equal study time on the two sections.

From my experience in these 2 CATS, it seemed to not matter that I was getting much of the difficult questions right in the middle.

Well, they did help you to lift your score...the problem was that you then missed a cluster of questions at the end of the section and so that dropped your score down again. The next question is what you can do in order to maintain your higher score all the way to the end of the section.

There are a few possible causes of that end-of-section drop.
– One of the most common is timing. Often, people have a small number (3-6) of problems on which they spent extra time—and then they have to start rushing later and that causes mistakes, leading to a score drop at the end.
– Another is mental fatigue—you basically run out of steam towards the end of the section and start missing problems that you know how to do just because you're too tired.
– And a third is basically a run of bad luck and/or holes in your foundation—you miss a string because you didn't know that set of content / question types. So then the task is to go study those things / plug those holes, and there will be less chance of something like that happening again.

You'll need to go analyze your test to try to figure out what caused the performance drop at the end.

With regards to 2), would it be a better strategy to go faster at the start and spend more time getting the second half of the questions correct since "where you end is what you get"?

Sort of! But not on everything, no, because then you just give yourself too many opportunities to make careless mistakes and that holds your score down.

The best strategy is to:
(1) Pay attention to your overall time management in the section so that you're never getting too far ahead or behind ("too far" = more than about 3-4 minutes)
(2) Choose to guess almost immediately on the 3-4 hardest questions as you see them throughout the section
(3) Recognize when you're stuck on a problem and let it go. Don't spend more than ~1 minute above the average for that problem type on any one problem (eg, Q average is 2min, so don't spend more than ~3 min on any one Q problem; SC average is about 1m20s, so don't spend more than about 2-2:20 on any one SC problem, etc.)

This time management article will help you with all of the above:
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog/everything-you-need-to-know-about-gmat-time-management-part-1-of-3/

Analyze your CAT to try to figure out why the score drop occurred and let us know what you think. Good luck!

[IzzyL681]

Hi Stacey,

Thank you for your advice. I will use these strategies and analysis, and apply it to CAT 3 in future.

With regards to the fact that the scoring scales are not actually the same and that Verbal has a 'lower cap' than Quant, lets take for example if a person were to score Q40 and V40 with a total score of 650. Does this mean that it is not the case whereby Q40 = 325 and V40 = 325? V40 will contribute to >325 while Q40 will contribute to <325 in the scoring system?

Or do let me know if this line of thinking is irrelevant. My main concern is that it seems much harder to get a good contributing score in Verbal as compared to Quant, as the amount of effort needed to increase my score by 1 point is much higher for Verbal.

Thank you!

[StaceyKoprince]

GMAC (the org that owns the GMAT) does not disclose how their algorithm combines the two section scores to arrive at the overall score. But we have built this score calculator based on hundreds of scores that students have reported to us:

https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/gmat-score-calculator/

Using that calculator, you can look up any pair of scores and see *approximately* what 3-digit score it will map to. (Note: Any pair of two-digit scores can map to up to three different three-digit scores. If you're curious as to why, there's a link on the score calculator page that will take you to an article explaining why.)

Finally, if you know it takes you a lot more effort to lift your score in one section, definitely take that into account as you make your plans. If you are going for a 700+ kind of score, then you are going for one of the top schools. The top schools typically want to see a minimum of 36 on V and 45 on Q, so aim to lift the two sections to at least those two scores. Beyond that, it's fine to spend more time on Q if you think that section is the better opportunity for you, though I would still try to lift V at least somewhat. The higher you go on one scale, the harder it is to go even higher, so you give yourself more options if you work on both scores.

Good luck—let us know how it goes!

[IzzyL681]

Hi Stacey,

Thank you for all your advice, I will take these into consideration during my studies.

[StaceyKoprince]

You are very welcome!