Overall Percentile Calculation?

[sagehen11]

Hi all,

My last two MGMAT CATs (#4 and #3) I scored 730 (Q:46, V:44) and 740 (Q:45, V:44), respectively. I'm curious though about the percentiles I was given along with those scores. For instance, on my third CAT I scored a 740 which was considered the 98th percentile but my Verbal and Quant percentiles were 97 and 81, respectively. I would have thought that my overall percentile would have been something of an average between my quant and verbal percentiles. In actuality though it was higher than either one of them.

The only explanation I can think of is that there are some test takers who do incredibly well on Verbal (scoring in the 99th percentile) and at the same time score incredibly poorly on Quant. In this way my somewhat-similar scores across the two sections could yield a higher overall percentile rank even though my percentile ranks for the two individual sections were not as high.

Has anyone else noticed this or have any explanation for why this is?

Thanks!

[StaceyKoprince]

As you've discovered, the overall percentile ranking is not an average of the two individual percentiles. And, yes, it has to do with the percentage of people who get certain combinations of scores.

For people who do score well in one section, it's much more common for the other section to be much lower. For someone to score well in both sections (80+ percentile) is more unusual, so that lifts the overall percentile, particularly if one score is REALLY high (95+). In other words, there aren't that many people who score 97th percentile in one section and 81st in the other - so your overall percentile is really high. :)

Nice work!