Far more difficult questions, but worse score?

[FabianS391]

Hey,

I just have a quick question and I hope somebody can explain me the following situation.

I`ve just finished my 3rd CAT Exam and I got a score of 580 (Q41/V29).
My Problem with this is that the questions, which I received in the verbal part were so much more difficult than the quant questions, but the verbal score which I received in the end was a lot worse than my Quant score.
I`m now wondering, why I encountered so many 700-800 questions and why the average difficulty was so noticeably higher, if in the end the test rates my abilities on a 500-600 Level anyway.
As you can probably already tell my Level of English is quite bad, so if I have to solve 700-800 questions, the percentage of questions, which I answer correctly drops significantly.

Question Level as a comparison:

Quant Part:
600-700 (19 questions)
700-800 (12 questions)
Avg Diff Correct: 628
Avg Diff Incorrect: 694

Verbal Part:
600-700 (18 questions)
700-800 (20 questions)
Avg Diff Correct: 672
Avg Diff Incorrect: 706

[StaceyKoprince]

There are two separate things going on.

First, although Q and V use the same numbers for the scoring scale (6 to 51), the scales themselves are not the same. A score of 41 on Q is the 43rd percentile—meaning you did better than 43 percent of the other people taking the test, specifically on the Q section. A score of 29 on V is the 57th percentile.

In other words, effectively, a score of 29 on V is "higher" than a score of 41 on Q—even though the number itself is lower. So you should have been earning some harder questions; the numbers that you presented in your post make sense.

Second, this may not have applied in your case, but I want to tell you anyway. Your score on the test is not a function of the percentage of questions you answer correctly. Your score is also not a function of the average difficulty of the questions you were given or you were able to answer correctly.

Your score is continuously calculated after every single question in order to determine what question to give you next—you are given what you "earn" on the test. As a result, your final score is essentially a measure of where you are at when the section ends.

Some people will do very well in the early and middle portions of the exam—but they will take extra time to achieve that higher performance. They will then run out of time at the end of the section and their score will drop. And where you end is what you get, so if this happens, then your "average" performance over the whole section could very well be higher than your final score.

This is why it is so important to maintain a steady performance over the length of the entire section—and why you hear us tell people that they have to guess on some questions and move on. We're trying to help you avoid the "end of section drop." I don't know whether that's what happened in your case, but I want you to know the information for future.

[FabianS391]

Thank you so much for the quick response.

I didn`t know that a 29 in Verbal is essentially higher than a 41 in Quant.
Thanks again for answering my question in such detail.

With best regards

Fabian

[StaceyKoprince]

You're welcome!