CAT MATH TEST - Can someone explain?

[temp]

I confused about MGMAT's scoring. I've heard they are pretty close to the actual GMAT scoring, however, I'm baffled by this:

Here are my quant scores

Test1: 40
Avg. Difficulty PS: 550-620 (2 700-800 level questions)
Avg. Difficulty DS: 610-610 (1 700-800 level question)

Test2: 36
Avg. Difficulty PS: 590-610 (3 700-800 level questions)
Avg. Difficulty DS: 480-570 (1 700-800 level question)

Test3: 35
Avg. Difficulty PS: 620-670 (6 700-800 level questions)
Avg. Difficulty DS: 590-660 (2 700-800 level question)


Why is my score getting LOWER? and the number of difficult problems being asked HIGHER?

If I'm being asked harder questions, shouldn't my score be higher?

[StaceyKoprince]

Nope. Average difficulty is a measure of the difficulty over the entire test. Your score is a measure of your scoring level at the end of the section - it is NOT a measure of your average performance over the entire section. Weird, I know - the test is not scored the way you're used to tests being scored.

So you could get tons of 700+ questions in the early to middle part of the test, then run out of time or tank for some other reason and your score would drop at the end.

My guess is that, as you've been offered harder questions, you've also spent more time on them... and then you've had to rush more at the end and your score goes down. Go look at the data. How much is it helping you to go over 2 minutes? How about over 3 minutes? How many times did you have to answer a question in under 90 seconds (or 60!) not because you wanted to but because you knew you were behind on time? How many of these were ones you probably would've gotten right if you'd spent normal time but you made a mistake because you were rushing? It hurts your score far more to get easier questions wrong than it does to get harder ones wrong. Don't get sucked into the trap of getting stuck on problems as you're offered harder ones - if you don't know how to do it in 2 minutes, you don't know how to do it the way it's supposed to be done. Spending extra time usually doesn't help AND every second you go over, that's time taken away from other problems you might be able to do... if only you have the time.

[Guest]

Thank you for your analysis.

I think I do fairly well on the harder questions, but I have some gaps in the average and lower level questions. I will try to address these areas and see how this effects my score.

Thanks again.

[rfernandez]

We're glad it was helpful.