Many GMAT test takers are seeing relatively low scores on their official practice tests, so we’d like to address a couple of issues that most people are unaware of to help set people’s minds at ease. If you’ve gotten some disappointing scores on mock exams, there is hope for you! Read on…
The first point to mention, and one that we’ve discussed in a previous article, is about the unanswered-question penalty. Most test-takers just don’t understand how punishing it is. Even leaving a single question unanswered brings the score down significantly. And leaving many unanswered brings the score down to near zero! Technically the lowest score possible on a section is 60, but not finishing a section can actually bring the score right down to 60. We’ve even seen cases where a test taker was doing very well and then ran out of time, leaving many questions unanswered, and received a 60 for that section! Ouch! So if you are getting absurdly low section scores and are leaving questions unanswered, that is the reason! There’s a simple fix: once you get down to one minute left, just start bubbling in answers! It’s that simple!
But there is another fact about the official practice tests that GMAT test-takers are almost universally unaware of and it’s definitely causing distress out there in GMAT land. With the pre-2024 version of the GMAT (often referred to as the Classic GMAT), it was a common, almost ubiquitous occurrence to get good scores on the official practice tests and then have a “let down” on the actual GMAT. Usually, people would eventually hit their mark, but it was very common for someone to have practice test scores in the 700 to 730 range and then get a 680 (or sometimes much lower than that) on their first official GMAT. Some of that was almost certainly attributable to test-day nerves, but there was definitely something else going on there: the practice test scores just seemed ever so slightly inflated.
Well, with the current version of the GMAT, the opposite seems to be true! Scores from the official practice tests seem to be slightly deflated! And again, it’s causing people a lot of distress because they are panicking and wondering why they can’t score in the range that they want to score in. So, we are here to tell you that you might in fact be in that desired score range, even though the official practice tests are telling you otherwise. As of this writing, at least half of the students we have worked with have scored better on their actual GMAT than they did on any of their practice tests! Not all, but maybe even the majority! We have seen a couple of people underperform and we’ve seen others come close to or equal their best practice test scores, but at least half have actually scored better. Given how unusual this was with the previous version of the GMAT, this is honestly astounding. This almost NEVER happened with the pre-2024 version of the test!
In particular, people have been “outperforming” on the Quant section of the actual GMAT more than on any other section of the test. Again, this should be cause for calm among test-takers because most people stress the Quant section more than the others (both because that is naturally the hardest for people AND because they are seeing subpar scores on the Quant section of the practice tests). In fact, people have been reporting that the Quant section of the actual GMAT actually feels less difficult than what they had experienced on the practice tests. So, not only are scores coming in higher, but the subjective experience tends to feel better for people too!
And lest you believe that this is just what we are seeing here at Reason Test Prep, much of this feedback is echoed in the post-test debriefs on GMAT Club as well. The phenomenon we are describing here doesn’t seem quite as common among GMAT Club users, but most of the people posting about their experiences studying for and taking the GMAT have reported actual GMAT scores that are in the high range of what they had scored on their official practice tests, if not higher.
One last thing. People!!! Please focus on the actual section scores, not the percentiles. This is another cause of stress that is avoidable. The percentiles on the Quant section are lower than that of the DI and Verbal sections for equivalent scores because there are a lot of non-native English speakers who score perfect or near perfect on the Quant section but who perform worse on Verbal and even DI. But an 82 on Quant, which is “only” 76th percentile as of this writing, IS a very good Quant score! Even an 80, which is 66th percentile as of this writing, is a good Quant score. So please don’t let the percentiles skew your impression of where you stand!
Our hope with this article is to help GMAT test takers reduce their anxiety as they prepare for the test. The official practice tests are great and using them is absolutely essential to success on the GMAT, but don’t let what appear to be subpar scores on the practice tests get you down. The only way to know where you really stand is to take the actual GMAT. When you do so, you may be pleasantly surprised to see a score that is higher than you expected!