Test Preparation

Okay, you know the GMAT’s format and how many questions it has and so on. But what about what’s really important to you, the crucial final score? Probably very few people take standardized tests for fun, so here’s the lowdown on scoring.

How the GMAT testers figure your score

Because the GMAT is a computer adaptive test, our verbal and quantitative scores aren’t based just on the number of questions you get right. The scores you earn are based on these three factors:

The difficulty of the questions you answer
The questions become more difficult as you continue to answer correctly, so getting tough questions means you’re doing well on the test.

The number of questions that you answer
If you don’t get to all the question in the verbal and quantitative sections, your score is reduced by the proportion of questions you didn’t answer. So if you fail to answer 5 of the 37 quantitative questions, for example, your raw score would be reduced by 13 percent and your percentile rank may to from the 90th percentile to the 75th percentile.

The number of questions you answer correctly
In addition to scoring based on how difficult the questions are, the GMAT score also reflects your ability to answer those questions correctly.

GMAT essay readers determine your analytical writing assessment (AWA) score. College and university faculty members from different disciplines read your responses to the essay prompts. Two independent readers score each of the two writing assignments separately on a scale from 1 to 6, with 6 being the top score. Your final score is the average of the scores from each of the readers for each of the essays.

The GMAT can be taken only as a computer-adaptive test (CAT). The CAT adapts to your ability level by presenting you with questions of various difficulty, depending on how you answer previous questions. If you’re answering many questions correctly, the computer gives you harder questions as it seeks to find the limits of your impressive intellect. If you’re having a tough day and many of your answers are wrong, the computer will present you with easier questions as it seeks to find the correct level of difficulty for you.

With the CAT format, your score isn’t based solely on how many questions you get right and wrong but rather on the average difficulty of the questions. You could miss several questions and still get a very high score, so long as the questions you missed were among the most difficult available in the bank of questions. At the end of each section, the computer scores you based on your level of ability.

Answering in an orderly fashion
With the CAT format, the question order in the verbal and quantitative sections is different from the order on paper exams that have a test booklet and answer sheet. On the CAT, the first ten questions of the test are preselected for you, and the order of subsequent questions depends on how well you’ve answered the previous questions. So if you do well on the first ten questions, question 11 will reflect your success by being more challenging. If you do poorly on the initial questions, you’ll get an easier question 11. The program continues to take all previous questions into account as it feeds you question after question.

Perhaps the most important difference of the CAT format is that because each question is based on your answers to previous questions, you can’t go back to any question. You must answer each question as it comes. After you confirm your answer, it’s final. If you realize three questions later that you made a mistake, try not to worry about it. After all, your score is based on not only your number of right and wrong answers but also the difficulty of the questions.

Observing time limits
Both the verbal and quantitative sections have a 75 minute time limit. Because the quantitative section has 37 questions, you have about two minutes to master each question. The verbal section has 41 questions, so you have a little less time to ponder those, about a minute and three quarters per question. You don’t have unlimited time in the analytical writing section either; you have to write each of the two essays within 30 minutes, for a total of 60 minutes spent on analytical writing.

These time limits have important implications for your test strategy. Your GMAT score depends on the number of questions you’re able to ansewr. If you run out of time and leave questions unanswered at the end of a section, you’ll essentially reduce your score by the number of questions you don’t answer.

Honing your computer skills for the GMAT
Technically challenged, take heart. You need to have only minimal computer skills to take the CAT format of the GMAT test. In fact, the skills you need for the test are far less than those you’ll need while pursuing an MBA! Because you have to type your essays, you need basic word-processing skills. For the multiple-choice sections, you need to know how to select answers using either the mouse or the keyboard. That’s it for the computer skills you need to take the GMAT.