Last week, GMAC updated its percentiles for GMAT scores. The organization does this once a year to smooth out any differences in the testing pool.

What do I mean by “differences?” The demographics of the people taking the exam change over time. In particular, over the last ten years or so, GMAC has seen a huge increase in the number of non-United-States-based students taking the test. A majority of these students speak English as a second (or third!) language; a majority also have a better grounding in quantitative skills than the average U.S.-educated student. These differences lead to changes in the data over time.

Scaled Scores vs. Percentiles

GMAT results are reported using various “scaled scores.” We receive a 2-digit score for quant, a separate 2-digit score for verbal, a Q+V-combined 3-digit score, and two more separate scores for the essay and IR sections.

Think of these scaled scores as “skill levels.” They reflect a specific, measurable level of ability. Here’s the interesting thing: the skills needed to reach a certain level do not change over time. A quant score of 45 today reflects the same skill level as a quant score of 45 earned ten or even twenty years ago.

What does change over time is the percentile ranking associated with that score. A percentile ranking reflects how much better you did than a certain percentage of the test-taking population. For example, if you score in the 75^th percentile, then you scored better than 75% of the people taking the test—not just that day, or that week, but for the past couple of years (or whatever timeframe is designated for that test).

Imagine that you give a math test to a bunch of 10-year-olds. The scoring algorithm is very simple: if you get a question right, you get one point. You then gather all of the scores and figure out percentile rankings for that group. Let’s say that a certain score (let’s call it 5) represents the 50^th percentile. A student who scores 5 earned a better score than 50% of her peers.

Then you take that exact test and give it to a bunch of 14-year-olds. They’re a lot better at math. The same score of 5 might represent only the 25^th percentile for this new group, because more of these students have better math skills and can answer more questions correctly. A score of 5 still means the same thing (in this case, 5 questions right), but the pool of testers has changed and so the percentile rankings change too.

This is essentially what happens with the GMAT over time as well. If more people who are good at math start taking the test, then that score of 45 (which represents a certain, fixed level of skill) will drop in the percentile rankings because more people will be capable of performing at that level or higher.

We’ve seen especially big demographic changes on the GMAT over the last 5 to 10 years. In 2006, a quant score of 45 was rated the 78^th percentile. Someone scoring at that level had better quant skills than 78% of the people taking the exam around that time.

Today, that same skill level of 45 rates the 66^th percentile. This does not mean that someone scoring a 45 today is worse at math than someone with the same score in 2006; rather, the two students are equally good. Instead, a greater percentage of the population taking the test today has stronger math skills.

You might be thinking: oh, great. So that means I have to do even better at math. Actually, the opposite is (sort of) true. Keep reading.

This Year’s Trends

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Note: The following is a guest post by Liza Weale, Senior Consultant for mbaMission.

The numbers from GMAC’s 2013 Corporate Recruiters Survey are in, and the MBA continues to gain ground with employers. Of the companies surveyed, 75% plan to hire MBAs in 2013 versus the 71% that hired business school graduates in 2012. The median starting salary for MBAs at U.S. companies is also on the rise: up from $90K in 2012 to $95K in 2013. And companies in the classic fields of consulting and finance are not the only ones expecting to add MBAs to their work force (79% in 2013 over 69% in 2012 and 75% in 2013 over 70% in 2012, respectively): 86% of energy and utility companies (up 17% over 2012) and 89% of health care and pharma companies (up 12% over 2012) report plans to do so as well.

Undoubtedly, the outlook for MBAs is rosy, but being aware of this promising forecast is not enough to help an applicant gain a spot at a top program. Some deep soul searching is needed, and resources such as GMAC’s 2013 Corporate Recruiters Survey can be excellent sources of inspiration”especially as candidates contemplate what next after business school.

The following are a few things that might be helpful to consider as you think about your goals:

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The new release of GMATPrep, version 2.2, is a significant upgrade!

The biggest improvement is that the software now allows you to review previous practice problems and tests. I was excited when I saw this feature listed in the README and I was thrilled when I found that I could actually review the practice problems and the tests that I took last year! Thank you, GMAC! This is enormously helpful for test takers.

The default for both practice problem sets is now to do what most people want to do, which is to save the test for later review, and the new user interface makes it very hard to accidently delete a practice test. You have to press a test ˜reset’ button and then go through a dialog to reset your tests, another big improvement.

I was also delighted to see that in the practice utility, the Reading Comprehension problems are now grouped correctly. In the previous versions of GMAT Prep, each RC practice problem included an entirely new passage, unlike the real test, where of course each passage has 3 or 4 associated questions. This is another significant improvement and makes the practice utility more helpful for people who are working on RC or who want to do mixed verbal sets. Since this new feature works correctly with mixed drills as well, you can now use GMATPrep to specify realistic verbal mixed sets, with SC, CR, and RC problems, as well as realistic quant mixed sets of PS and DS problems.

Although the two practice tests still seem to have only one IR section, an IR percentile ranking is now computed, which is helpful.

There are is also some new timing analysis available in practice sets, along with some at least moderately useful progress tracking graphs for examining progress on practice sets.

And speaking of time, you can now pause a practice exam or question session. Although you really shouldn’t do this if you want a realistic practice experience, sometimes it is helpful, such as when you are writing a review of the software and need to test features and then write about them. J

GMAC must be thinking more about customer support because you can now generate system information at the click of button, which makes things much easier if you ever need to call of email GMAC about a software problem.

And finally, if you are a test taker with a GMAC approved timing accommodation, you can ask for a special code that you enter that will allow you to take practice tests with the appropriate amount of extra time.

All in all, very well done GMAC! I noticed a couple of weird little bugs that I’ve listed below, but they are minor compared to the improvements and have easy workarounds, which I’ve described.

Weird Little Bugs:

• You have to enter your mba.com account name and password when you first launch GMATPREP and if you are logged in to mba.com when you try this, you will get an unhelpful unknown error message. If you see this message, just log out of mba.com’s website and try starting GMAT Prep again.

• When you solve an IR table question, the ˜submit’ button will be grayed out until you click on sort by a column “ even if you have filled in all of the answers “ so just remember to click on something to sort by if you didn’t actually have to sort (and usually you will have to) to answer the question.

GMAC has posted new sample Integrated Reasoning questions here. Here’s a first review of these questions, with 5 big takeaways.

1) No Drastic Changes

There’s nothing here that’s too surprising. Integrated Reasoning emphasizes three big tasks:

a) Deal with integrated math & verbal content, as the name says
b) Deal with real-world data in quantity
c) Read critically, drawing accurate inferences from given evidence

The newly released questions reflect these three tasks, just as the older ones did.

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Several weeks ago, GMAC (the people who make the test) held its biennial Test Prep Summit, and we’ve all been writing articles about it ever since.  I have more for you today “ and enough for several more articles after that, including another idioms article that I had hoped to have for you today, but the research isn’t done yet. Instead, today I’m going to share with you some very useful knowledge that has been published by Lawrence M. Rudner, Chief Psychometrician of GMAC, in his Demystifying the GMAT article series.

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Since the GMAT Prep summit, we have been covering what the changes that were described there mean based on what Larry Rudner, GMAC vice president of research and development and chief psychometrician, has told us. Now he has written an official response, which we have re-posted below.  Hopefully this will further clarify what those differences consist of and how you can study for the GMAT successfully. You can find the original posting here.

Idioms, Sentence Correction, and the GMAT Exam

Recently there has been some discussion and questioning about the role and place of idioms and sentence correction as they apply to the skills tested in the GMAT exam.  Much of what has been written has been well reasoned but some of what has been written is only partially accurate or reflects some misconceptions. With this posting I hope to put these two important pieces of the GMAT exam in their proper place within the context of what the exam measures and how.

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This article is an update from Stacey Koprince’s Monday article.

I received a reply from Larry (Dr. Rudner – whom I quote in the article). He’s traveling right now, so can’t check specific details of problems and what is or isn’t included idiom-wise, but he did have this to say (quotes from him):

“I had no idea that students were studying idioms in preparation for the GMAT and that this is a big deal.”

–>So it’s good that we told him! I think this is a to-be-expected disconnect between the publicly-released – and by definition older – materials that we all see, such as the OG, and the new materials – but super-secret and not released – that he works with now. We have to go by the older stuff, of course, but he and his team are working exclusively with the newer stuff and don’t necessarily realize what we don’t know. Read more

by Stacey Koprince, Manhattan GMAT Instructor

I just got back from the biennial GMAC Test Prep Summit. (Quick: what does biennial mean? Just in case you see the word in a question!) We discussed a number of very interesting things. Don’t worry “ I won’t totally geek out on you “ but some of what we discussed will be useful for you even if you don’t make your career in test prep. 🙂

In this article, we’re going to discuss information from the conference that is relevant to everyone taking the test right now (or soon). Most of the key bits were gleaned from the presentations of Dr. Lawrence M. Rudner, Chief Psychometrician of GMAC. All quotes and statistics throughout this article are courtesy of Larry. Keep an eye out for a future article in which we’ll dive a bit more deeply into the Next Generation GMAT, which will launch in June of 2012. (Oh “ and biennial means every 2 years.) Read more

Starting in June 2012, the GMAT will have a new section, called Integrated Reasoning. This section will take the place of one of the two essays at the beginning of the exam. As the date for this new section looms closer, the GMAC (the company that makes the exam) have slowly been releasing more information about it. One of the ways in which they have been doing so is via video, and we thought we would share their insight with you.

Here is a good overview of what the new section will include:

And here is a breakdown of the Graphics Interpretation Question Type — one of the four sections to be tested within the 12 Integrated Reasoning questions: Read more

If you want a little extra practice with your Analytical Writing Essays, we’ve just come across a great resource for you. The GMAC is hosting a survey that includes having participants write out two essays. If you are studying for the GMAT, this gives you a great chance to see more sample essay questions as you practice. In addition, the GMAC is giving participants $30 for completing this survey. They’re only looking for 1000 participants, so be sure to sign up soon if you want this opportunity!

You can find out more about the survey here.