Really weird GMATPrep score.. too scared.. please help

[bazinga]

Took a GMATPrep today.. and scored 49 in Quant(11 wrong) and 29(16 wrong) in verbal. This is freaking me out totally..Have got GMAT on coming Saturday..

I made total 16 mistakes in Verbal.
6,9,10,16,20,22,26,27,30,32,34,37,38,39,40,41.

I ran out of time and had to guess last 5 questions and got all of them worng :( . I know i get penalized for that.. but is it that bad that i should get 29 ???

I took MGMAT-4 and got 41 in verbal..
even in MGMAT-1,2 and 3 my verbal score was 34-35

I was quite confident i will get a decent score in Gmatprep, and now i am devastated.

Please let me know what you think?? Is the score is so low just because of last 5 questions or in general its a bad verbal performance..??

Please help.. please please...

[bazinga]

Stacy,

I read the book Gmat-uncovered that you had mentioned in one of your earlier posts. Looks like last 5 questions got me in.

But is the penalty really that bad

had i not committed the mistakes and finished the section with reasonable accuracy.. how much i would have got ?

[StaceyKoprince]

Typically, yes, the penalty for getting 5 in a row wrong at the end is pretty steep - usually around 2 to 2.5 percentile points per problem. And, of course, then the test is over, so you don't have any way to earn back some of those points.

There isn't a way, unfortunately, for me to estimate with any accuracy what would have happened if you had had reasonable time to spend for the last five questions - because having that time would have meant that you'd made some different decisions earlier in the section, so you might have missed some earlier questions instead of 5 in a row later. But certainly, it caused a big drop and the important thing is not to let that happen on the real test.

Go take a look at where you spent way too much time. Your task is to cut those problems off faster on the real test. In particular, if you notice that you spent way too long on, say, 3 CR questions and you got 2 or 3 of them wrong, then you know it's also not worth it to spend a bunch of extra time on CR. That makes it easier to cut yourself off the next time you're tempted to spend too long! And if you notice that there are certain question types (eg, CR boldface questions) on which you consistently spend too much time AND you don't get a lot of those right, be aware of that as soon as one pops up on the screen. Give it a shot within 2 minutes and move on - or, if you're already behind and need to save time somewhere, save it on this one by guessing immediately. Basically, be aware of your weakenesses and make decisions accordingly!

Way too long timing:
2+m on SC
2m45s+ on CR
>5m to read a passage and answer 1st Q
>2.5m on any non-1st RC Q

Also, there may have been other things going on in that section, so you should take a look through all of the ones that you missed. Did you miss them because there was something that you didn't know? Learn that thing. Did you miss them because you mis-read or misunderstood something? What was that and how can you understand it properly next time? Did you really know how to do some but made careless mistakes? What were the careless mistakes? How can you change the way you did things to minimize the chances of repeating that kind of careless mistake?

[anantbhatia]

Hi,
I had a similar experience and I got 650 in gmat.

Maths-49
Verbal -29

I know I can improve maths and get a 50, and also the verbal section by analysing my mistakes.I did not analyse my mistakes earlier.

How much did you get in the real test?

Regards,
Anant

[djfunny]

Please let me know what you think?? Is the score is so low just because of:
1. last 5 questions
2. in general its a bad verbal performance..??

Here in this question I would go with E, i.e. statements (1) and (2) TOGETHER are NOT sufficient to answer the question.

I also took GMATprep and q15 and v11 wrong answers. Moreover, I got last q6 and five out of last v6 wrong. The score, however, was q49 v37 = 700. I think the reason for that is this. Remember, GMAT says each session has around 9-12 test questions which are not scored? So it may well be the case that most of the questions I answered wrong were test questions whereas you failed on the real ones.

[StaceyKoprince]

We don't actually know for sure whether GMATPrep counts all of the questions or doesn't count some. All of the questions given on GMATPrep have already been tested as experimental on the real exam and have been given on the real exam - they are what are called "released" questions. So it is possible that the GMATPrep algorithm does not take experimentals into account.

My guess, however, is that they do assign some as "experimental" questions just so that they can use the same algorithm. So it is possible (maybe even likely) that that accounts for some of the difference when two people both get the last 5 questions in a row wrong. (Note: we do know that you can't get 5 experimentals in a row. My guess is that it's even more restricted than that - probably no more than 2 or 3 in a row - but we know for sure that you can't get 5 in a row.)

Probably the major difference though: you were likely at different scoring levels when the string of bad answers occurred. You both lost ground - you were just starting from different points. You were at a higher level than 700 when the "erosion" of your score started - possibly only a little higher and possibly much higher, depending on how experimentals might have played into it.

[anantbhatia]

Hi Stacey,

Thanks for the reply:).I asked mba.com and they told me that they do not consider experimental questions in GMATprep.

Regards,
Anant

[StaceyKoprince]

Good to know! I know that they did not give actual experimental questions - they're all released questions - but I didn't know whether they might assign some as experimental just to be able to use the same algorithm.

Thanks for letting me know!