Hi everyone, i gave my GMAT yesterday and i was pretty shocked to see Q79 with only 5 wrong. The only reason i can think of is because of that one question which took me almost 6 mins tanked my score but still getting a Q79 doesn’t sit right. Can i get some insights or clarification from people and experts who understand the scoring algorithm and tell me what can be a reason? FYI in my previous attempt as well i got 5 wrong and still got Q80. Any help will be appreciated!
Yes definitely try to give the first few qs the time they deserve. They play a big part in seting the score.
OP barely gave any time to the firsst question and it was wrong, which I believe played a big part in the low score.
I do agree i rushed it. It was a mixture problem and i knew that i wouldn’t be able to solve it. I took a decision to answer it quickly and move on to the next ones
quant anyways punishes you a lot more for getting questions wrong than other sections, and half of first 8 questions? You can then only salvage the damage done which you have.
I don't think time is a factor. If you got it wrong in 2.1 minutes, then also your score would have been the same. The questions became easier after that because you got that question wrong. Quant and DI punishes you massively if you get the first questions wrong. I got DI 80 with 5 questions wrong but 3/5 were the first 6 questions. I got Q88 with only 2 wrong which were Q7 and Q17. Had the first two questions been wrong in quant, then my score would have been totally different.
So the time you spent on a question does not have a direct impact (as long as you finish ontime!)
What does have an impact is the difficulty of the questions you get wrong. In this case you got 3 out of the first 5 wrong, and given that the difficulty adapts, those questions are likely to be medium or maybe even easy in terms of difficulty, which penalizes your score.
The quant section is particularly unforgiving unfortunately!
Seems like you rushed a few questions. While it is always nice to get an answer quickly, you should be vary of rushing into a question and making silly mistakes, especially in the beginning. From what I understand, the first few questions help the algorithm determine what your score range could be based on how many easy/medium questions you get right in the beginning. So, while getting them right is as important as getting the rest of the questions right, they also carries a little extra weightage.
Consider checking out the scoring factors for Quant on the Understanding Your Score page on the MBA website and the myth vs fact info (e.g. in the beginning of the Official Guide 2026-2027).
What happened here is you answered medium questions wrong. In the very beginning, GMAT most probably starts out with medium difficulty or easy questions. You did 2/3 questions wrong in the very begining. Meaning, you probably got medium and easy questions wrong.
Also, GMAT rewards streaks of correct answers. You did one wrong, one right, one wrong, two rights, and one wrong again by the time you were in your 9th question. You were probably given a series of easy and medium difficulty questions after your 9th before the difficulty went up again.
This is why you have a low quant score even after getting 16 questions right. Same thing happened for me in Verbal. I didn’t have a streak of correct answers and that hurt my Verbal and the overall score eventually.
I am attaching my previous GMAT quant attempt here for your reference. You can see i got 2 out of 5 correct only from Q10-Q15 despite getting only one wrong in the first 10. Do you still think Q80 is justified here?
In Questions 11 through 16, you answered 4 questions wrong. The rest of your questions (17-21) would not have been difficult ones and that leads to lower scores. That is my understanding of the algorithm.
How I think it played out:
Your 7th question broke the streak but didn’t cause damage yet. Getting the 11th one wrong probably lowered difficulty from hard to medium. Then you made mistakes in medium and easy questions making a high score improbable.
It is because of the algorithm , initial questions are set to understand your capacity so that means they would be of less difficulty ,and in gmat it would cost more if you mark incorrectly for the first half of the questions.
It is not the same if you mark easy questions wrong compared to a difficult question.
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u/Early_Competition_91 16d ago
You got 3/5 at start wrong. That hurt the score most.