Analyzing Your GMAT Enhanced Score Report (Part 1)
After you take your official GMAT, you can order an Enhanced Score Report (ESR) that provides more detailed data about your test performance. If you’re planning to retake the GMAT, the ESR can provide you with a good sense of what you need to improve in order to earn a higher score next time. And you can order the ESR even if you cancel your score—a really helpful feature.
First, have you already bought an ESR? If so, go grab it right now. If it has been a while since you downloaded it, go and download a new version from the official website. GMAC periodically releases new features and they’re retroactive—when you download the report again, you’ll get the new features, even if they weren’t available when you first bought the report.
If you aren’t sure yet whether you want to buy your Enhanced Score Report, GMAC offers a sample of a full report so that you can see what’s included. (Note: If you are planning to take the exam again and are at all unsure about what you need to improve, I would consider investing in the ESR. It won’t tell you everything you need to improve, but it will provide important information. As of this writing, it costs $30.)
What does the GMAT Enhanced Score Report contain?
This series will show you how to analyze every data point contained in the report. Let’s start with a quick summary. There are 5 sections in the report; I’ve split the data in each section into two groups: really useful and less useful. (Note: If certain data is repeated—for example, a score—I only mention it the first time the data point appears in the report.)
Grab your ESR or GMAC’s sample ESR and scan the report as you look through the below.
1) Overall GMAT Exam Performance
Really Useful:
- All of your scores: Total, Quant, Verbal, Integrated Reasoning, and Essay
Less Useful:
- Your average time spent per problem for the three multiple-choice sections.
- The percentile rankings of your scores.
2) Integrated Reasoning
Really Useful:
- Average time spent on correct vs. incorrect problems
Less Useful:
- Percentage of questions answered correctly
- Average time spent on all problems in section
3) Verbal
Really Useful:
- Percentile rankings for each of the three verbal question types
- Average time spent on each of the three verbal question types
- The “quadrant” information—percent correct, average difficulty, and average time by quadrant or quarter of the test
Less Useful:
- Performance by fundamental skills
4) Quant
Really Useful:
- Percentile rankings by question type (PS, DS) and broad content area
- Average time spent by question type (PS, DS) and broad content area
- Performance by fundamental skills
- The “quadrant” information—percent correct, average difficulty, and average time by quadrant or quarter of the test
Less Useful:
- All of the quant stuff is pretty useful
5) Essay
Really Useful:
- If your score is below 4, all of it
Less Useful:
- If your score is 4+, none of it
Part 1 of the series (aka the part you’re reading right now) will cover the Overall section as well as Integrated Reasoning and Essay. Part 2 will cover Verbal and part 3 will cover Quant.
GMAT Enhanced Score Report: Overall GMAT Exam Performance
The very first data point is your Total score—the score everyone means when they say “What did you get on the GMAT?” The Total score is a 3-digit score on the scale 200 to 800. You’ll also see a percentile number—that’s the number that has a th right after it. For instance, if you see 90th, then you scored in the 90th percentile. A percentile is a ranking; if you scored in the 90th percentile, then you scored better than 90% of the people who have taken the exam over the past 3 years.
After your Total score, you’ll see your section scores and percentile rankings for each of the four sections (IR, Verbal, Quant, and Essay). Your Quant and Verbal scores combine to give you your Total score; the IR and Essay scores are completely independent of everything else.
Here’s the scoring info from an exam I took in 2015:
Aside: Yes, I “only” scored a 710 even though my top score is 780! We are often testing out various hypotheses when taking the official exam. On this one, I took IR normally. On Verbal, I wanted to see whether I could gauge the kinds of questions that someone capable of scoring a 40 would likely get right or wrong—and, yay, I succeeded in scoring a 40 (I didn’t the first time I tried this). On Quant, I wanted to see what would happen if I bailed immediately every single time I saw a topic I hated (no limits in terms of the number of times I did this). I guessed (B) immediately on 8 questions (this was back when there were 37 questions in the Quant section).
Back to our analysis. Most schools care most about your Total score, then Quant and Verbal, then IR, and finally Essay. Here’s how to interpret your scores:
- As a general rule, top-10 schools are looking for Total scores in the 700+ range, which roughly corresponds to the 90th percentile or higher.
- The highest Quant score you can earn is a 51; top-10 schools usually consider a 48+ a strong Quant score, though 45+ is typically good enough.
- The highest Verbal score you can technically earn is a 51, but a score of 45 is the 99th percentile; it’s quite rare to score higher than 45 on Verbal, so I consider a 45 the practical upper limit. A 40+ is generally considered strong even for top-10 schools, though a 35+ is usually good enough.
- The highest IR score is an 8; most schools consider a 5 or higher good enough.
- Finally, the highest Essay score is a 6; this one uses half-point increments (that is, you can score 6.0, 5.5, 5.0, …). Schools generally consider 4.5+ fine and even a 4.0 is usually good enough. Interestingly, a score of 4.0 is around the 20th percentile—so the vast majority of test takers (approximately 80%) receive a “good enough” score of 4.0 or higher.
- If you’re curious, here is GMAC’s full listing of scores and percentiles for all sections of the exam.
Note: Q45 and V35 will get you to a Total score of about 650. If you want a 700+, you’ll have to do significantly better than good enough on at least one of Q and V.
This first page of the report also contains a graphic showing average time spent per problem for each of the three multiple-choice sections (IR, V, Q). I find this data too broad to be very useful, but the timing data later in the report is very valuable.
GMAT Enhanced Score Report: Integrated Reasoning Performance
Of the data given in this section, I find the timing data the most useful. The percentage correct isn’t all that useful because your score already tells you whether you did well enough or whether you want to do better—and the IR section isn’t adaptive, so doing better on IR really does mean answering more questions correctly next time.
One thing to add on scoring: If you want to go into management consulting or banking for “name” firms, aim for a higher IR score. These companies all ask for your test scores when recruiting for internships or post-school jobs. A Bain spokesperson went on record a few years back, saying that they were checking IR scores as well, since that section of the GMAT best mimics the kinds of skills they want their consultants to have. They didn’t say what kind of score they want to see, but I would consider 6 the minimum and I’d be trying to get a 7 or 8.
Take a look at this:
Notice anything in that timing data?
Wow, did I spend way longer getting stuff wrong than right. Of course, I’m more likely to spend more time on hard problems and I’m also more likely to get hard problems wrong. But I apparently didn’t do a very good job of deciding when to bail on this section. I should have had at least a couple of bail-fast / not-worth-my-time problems helping to bring down my average incorrect time.
So that’s a lesson learned for next time. (Yes, I still scored an 8 on this section and the percentage correct data indicates that I probably got just one question wrong. But I see this pattern a lot for people who are scoring 4 or 5 and want to pick up a point or two. One of the easiest ways is to stop spending precious time and brain energy on stuff you’re getting wrong anyway. Let it go!)
Unfortunately, that’s all we get for IR—there are too few problems given in the section for the report to show any statistically significant data in terms of problem type or content area.
GMAT Enhanced Score Report: AWA Section Performance
AWA stands for Analytical Writing Assessment—the Essay. As I mentioned earlier, approximately 80% of all test-takers earn a good-enough score on the essay; you only need to worry about this section if you score lower than a 4.
If that does occur, then take a look at the sub-section rankings (Analyze, Relevancy, Organization, and Communication). If one or two categories are a lot lower than the others, then you know you need to work on that area. Below the graph, the report gives you a short description of your performance in each category.
If you have the main Official Guide book, grab that to gain more insight. Flip to the AWA chapter and find the Scoring Guide. It describes the qualities associated with essays scored 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and 0. Find the score you received and read the description. (If you received a half-point score, such as 3.5, then read the descriptions for the scores on either side—3 and 4, in this example.)
As you read the OG description, pay special attention to anything that sounds like the areas that were ranked lower in your ESR. For example, let’s say that I scored a 3 on the essay and my Relevancy category was the lowest in the ESR. In the report, Relevancy is discussed in terms of how well you supported the main points of your critique. In the OG, one of the bullets for a score of 3 has this to say: “offers support of little relevance and value for points of the critique.” So either I didn’t provide enough support at all or the support I did provide was not relevant or appropriate for whatever point I was trying to make.
That’s part 1 of our series! Join us again, as we’ll dive into the Verbal and Quantitative parts of the report.
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Stacey Koprince is a Manhattan Prep instructor based in Montreal, Canada and Los Angeles, California. Stacey has been teaching the GMAT, GRE, and LSAT for more than 15 years and is one of the most well-known instructors in the industry. Stacey loves to teach and is absolutely fascinated by standardized tests. Check out Stacey’s upcoming GMAT courses here.