difficulty level in GMAT

[AsadA969]

Hi Stacey,
Hope you're well by the mercy of God. I need to know about the difficulty level, which is used in GMAT. Suppose, my GMAT exam has been started at 500 difficulty level. When I end the question number 37 in quant then my difficulty level is 89 percentile (suppose because the quant score will not be given after the quant section instantly). My question is: Will my Verbal question be started at 89 difficulty level? if no, then what difficulty level will be maintained when the verbal section starts?
If you think that I've to know a little bit more about difficulty level, percentile and some other things, I request you to explain it.
Thanks Stacey.

[StaceyKoprince]

Hi! The quant and verbal sections are completely independent. You will start somewhere in the mid-range of difficulty (we don't know exactly, but probably in the 40th-60th percentile range) in each section and you will earn your score in that section from there.

[AsadA969]

To get 99 percentile in both Quant and Verbal part separately, how many questions (approximately) I've to make correct?
Thanks Stacey...

[StaceyKoprince]

The test is not scored based on percentage correct, so there isn't a hard answer to that question.

In addition, some number of the questions in each section are experimental / don't count, so you could get those all wrong (or all right!) without affecting your score at all.

Best guess, to score 45+ on verbal or 51 on quant, you're probably going to have to answer between 70% and 90% of the *counted* questions correctly. Somewhere between 5 and 10 questions in each section will not be counted, but you won't know which ones those are.

Short answer: don't dwell on percentage correct. It doesn't help during the test anyway: you don't want to think to yourself, "Oh, I need to lift my percentage correct, so I have to get this one right." You either know how to do it in a reasonable timeframe or you don't. Thinking that you "need" to get this one right doesn't change that; it can only hurt your performance by stressing you out and distracting you.