What does CAT SCORE MEAN?

[atharshiraz]

Hi,
When one takes the MGMAT CAT tests what do the CAT scores mean ?

What is a score of 35 on verbal? What does it mean ? What is the maximum score one can have ? How is the final score calculated ? Is the percentile on the right the number of questions that one got right or is it percentile rank ?

[StaceyKoprince]

Percentile is a measure of your ranking relative to everyone else who takes that same test. If you score in the 74th percentile, for example, then you scored better than 74% of the people taking the test.

Percentile is the measurement that really matters. The "scaled score" for quant and verbal (officially, 0 to 60; in practice 1 to 51) could be set to anything. I could use letters or greek symbols if I wanted - just as long as I also gave you the percentile ranking. :)

See this page for the official current percentiles associated with specific scaled scores:
http://www.mba.com/the-gmat/gmat-scores ... king-means

For this question:"how is the final score calculated?"
Are you asking how the official test makers combine the subscores to get the final three digit scaled score (and percentile)?
Or are you asking how adaptive exams in general work, as far as the scoring is concerned?

If the latter, log into your student center, find your copy of The GMAT Uncovered Guide, and read the section on Scoring. If you do, you'll discover that the test is not scored based upon percentage correct (in fact, the vast majority of testers get approximately the same percentage of questions correct, even at very different scoring levels).

If the former, the official test-makers combine the two subscores (Q and V) in some way, but they don't tell anyone what that formula is. (We have "reverse-engineered" our own formula based on a lot of data, but we don't know for sure what the official conversion formula is.)

[atharshiraz]

the official test-makers combine the two subscores (Q and V) in some way, but they don't tell anyone what that formula is. (We have "reverse-engineered" our own formula based on a lot of data, but we don't know for sure what the official conversion formula is.)

Ms. Koprince and MGMAT we would like to correlate questions answered correctly and questions answered incorrectly with our score. Right now we have no way of ascertaining how our answers are impacting the score. We would like to know this connection because it helps us figure out where we have made progress.

If you look at the Kaplan book - it gives a relatively simple way of calculating your GMAT score.

questions right - 1/4 * (questions wrong) = raw score

You look up the raw score's meaning in a table (which scales the raw score). That is it. Now next time we give a test on Kaplan we know exactly how many questions we got right, how many we got wrong and what our score is going to be because of it.

Right now your algorithm does not allow us to make a connection (despite its accuracy or merits). Perhaps we would like some simpler way to go along with your "algorithm" so we can connect the scores with the questions answered correctly and incorrectly.

[StaceyKoprince]

questions right - 1/4 * (questions wrong) = raw score

That is not how a CAT (any CAT) is scored. That is how the old paper-and-pencil version of the test was scored.

The algorithms used to calculate a CAT are not something that can be typed into a chat post, nor are they something you could calculate on your calculator.

Now next time we give a test on Kaplan we know exactly how many questions we got right, how many we got wrong and what our score is going to be because of it.

This is not how a CAT is scored at all - it is not based upon how many you get right or wrong. If you would like to learn more about how the scoring actually works, you can read the Scoring section of our free e-book The GMAT Uncovered Guide. It gets into some of the details (but a full explanation would run to 100+ pages, and even a summary version would be 10+ pages).

If you continue to try to approach a CAT as though # right is the primary indicator of score... then you will probably not do as well on CAT exams as you could, because that mindset will cause you to make decisions that will be detrimental to your score.