GMAT 700-800 Wrong Streak?

[LaurenzW45]

Hello Everyone,

I recently wrote a CAT from Manhattan Prep but and I am a bit puzzled by the result and how the algorithm works. On the Quant part I had questions 18 through 24 wrong but still only questions from the 700-800 range where given to me and my estimated score only decreased by 3 points from 47 to 44. I then had questions 25-27 correct and the last 4 wrong again and still ended at a score of 43 due to only 700-800 questions being given to me.

My Question now is as this is my 5th and final CAT before the actual GMAT, is this an inflated score because Manhattan prep "ran out" of questions in the 600-700 range from my previous test exams. Before I never really got a 700-800 question and was around a level of 38 - 42.

Many thanks in advance for any help!

[StaceyKoprince]

Hi! Good question. You got the questions that you should have gotten (in the 700+ range). That range really just means "this question came from the hardest/highest ~25% of the questions in the database." The quant section score ranges from 6 to 51 and your score was well into the 40s, so yes, your questions would come from that top group.

If you're in the 30s, then yes, that would primarily be 600-700 level.

(I will point out that the test algorithm is allowed to choose from among a range of difficulties near your current scoring level—so the difficulty bucket is not always going to have a 1:1 correlation with your score. The same is true on the real test. Also, what we're showing you in the report is one of four groupings/buckets, but the actual underlying algorithm is using the precisely calculated difficulty level for each individual problem in the database.)

In short: You did earn that score. Good luck!