Weights of Scores Per Question

[spourjalali]

Hello and good day,

My question is two-fold:

1) Are the first 10-20 questions in each section weighted more heavily than the others.

2) If so, what is a good strategy in maximizing our scores. Should be spend more time trying to get the first half or so of the questions correct and when perhaps randomly guess through the remaining ones in order to finish on time?

Thank you.

[StaceyKoprince]

(1) no, which makes the specific question you asked in (2) (if so...) moot. :)

Move steadily through the test. Make sure you have time to attempt every question. Make sure you can recognize when a question is just too hard for you; make a guess and move on at or before the expected time limit for that type of problem.

Read your copy of The GMAT Uncovered, our free e-book (if you have an account with us, you can find a downloadable PDF in your student center). Pay particular attention to the section that talks about scoring - that'll help you to understand what's going on and what implications that has for how you move through the test!

[spourjalali]

Dear Stacey,

I appreciate you reply and read the Manhattan Guide to the GMAT scoring system. What I read was not in accordance with what you said. It seems the initial questions do matter more.

Below is the referenced paragraph:
"...However, keep in mind that items appearing earlier in the exam contribute more assessment information than do later items. This means that correct answers early in the exam move the steep part of the curve farther to the right than do later items. For example, if the item shown above were, say, the fourth item on an exam, a correct answer would probably move the steep part to a range corresponding to an overall score of 680 or 690. If this item appeared as the twenty-fifth question, a correct answer might move the steep part to a range corresponding to an overall score of "only" 660."

Please clarify. Do I grant the first 10-15 questions more time?

Thank you

[StaceyKoprince]

Really short answer: no.

Longer answer: What I said was accurate. What you quoted was accurate. But "moving the curve more" is not equivalent to "those questions are worth more." It could, if it were the only thing that was going on, but there are other factors that also affect how the scoring works. This is only ONE factor. The algorithm is really very complex.

There are enough penalties built into the system for higher-level scorers that you can't game the test in this way. If you're going for a sub-600 score, then yes, it may be worth it to spend a modest amount of extra time on SOME earlier questions.

I will mention one thing before I explain in more detail. If you find certain questions that are worth spending an extra 15 to 30 seconds on, go right ahead. (Do that at any point in the test, really.) Anything up to 30 seconds extra is fair game if you think the question actually warrants the time, because you're also going to have some that you answer 15 to 30 seconds faster than expected. But don't start spending 3+ minutes on the early questions - or any questions anywhere in the section. That will hurt you in the long run.

It is true that, if you get a higher proportion of the earlier questions right, that will boost your score at that point in the test. (Note: that assumes you get them right. It's also the case that "extra time" does not automatically equal "getting it right.") However, you have to maintain that performance in order to maintain that score - your score can still drop quite steeply under certain circumstances, and those circumstances are pretty much tailor-made for the circumstance we're discussing.

Basically, the test writers are smart - smarter than we are! - and have already thought of this. If you can have a very high performance early on, then they expect you to maintain that performance and they've built the algorithm to take you down if you cannot.

If you spend extra time early on, then you will have to rush later. If you rush, you will miss questions that you should / could have gotten right. If you miss enough questions that the algorithm expected you to get right, or if you miss multiple (4+) questions in a row, or if you miss a higher proportion of questions than expected for the last 10 or 20, or if you actually run out of time and leave questions blank... your score will drop. And, at higher levels, you don't have much leeway before that drop is actually steeper than the gain you got by spending more time at the beginning.

As I mentioned in The GMAT Uncovered, if a 500 level test-taker gets the first 3 questions right in a row, then he would be allowed to get up to 3 questions wrong in a row at the end without completely losing the "gain" earned by getting the first three right. This scenario is theoretical, of course - a 500 level tester would find it quite difficult to answer three questions in a row correctly at the beginning because of the increase in difficulty level for the later questions.

A 780 level tester, on the other hand, would have to get the first 5 questions in a row right and miss no more than 1 question at the end before completely wiping out the "gain" earned at the beginning. In practical terms, that basically means that this tester can spend maybe 20 seconds extra on each of the first 5 questions and basically has to maintain that peformance throughout the rest of the section.

They didn't publish numbers for, say, a 700 level tester. It'll be somewhere in between the two examples above (though skewed more towards the 780 example, because a 700 is a lot closer to 780, percentile-wise, than 500).

And now you're also asking about the first 10-15, not just the first 5. Spend an extra minute on each of the first 10? I don't have to tell you that you're going to miss more than 2 that you might otherwise have answered correctly if you do that.

Finally, I have watched the Chief Psychometrician (yes, that's his real title - he's in charge of the algorithm) for GMAC give a technical presentation on the above topic. Twice. He's not lying to us or even fudging / obscuring the truth. He can refrain from mentioning things he doesn't want us to know, but he is legally bound to tell the truth for anything he does say (due to some "truth-in-testing" laws from a long time ago). And he's not even interested in obscuring things anyway - he actually wants us to know how it really works; it drives him crazy when he hears the myth about the earlier questions. :)

[spourjalali]

Dear Stacey,

Thank you for a most elaborate and detailed response. I appreciate you taking the time to truly flesh out how the system works. It was very comforting to read, understand, and know.

Sincerely,

Samaneh

[StaceyKoprince]

you are very welcome!