I think that's the way a lot of people interpret it is that verbal
is the harder section and people are scoring worse, that's not what it means
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this one's fun whichever section has a lower score is the section I'm performing worse on uh and this
is one that um I love this question because this is one or this myth this is one that I see from a
lot of students um who who come to me because they go I my score in verbal is in the 30s my score in
Quant is in the 40s and I have been prepping and prepping and prepping and prepping and prepping
and prepping on verbal and I just can't get it to the point I'm at in Quant what gives or maybe
I am improving my Verbal but it's just it's not having the impact on the overall score that I'm
expecting and I have to break the news to them that probably they've been studying entirely wrong
that they have been dedicating their study in a manner that's pretty unwise because an interesting
thing about the way this exam is scored and Eric maybe you have a little more context on this
um is that both of these sections are scored on the same scale they're both scored from 6 to 51.
however these sections test totally different things and students perform totally differently
on them and as a result those scores are not comparable in the least so what a 40 means on
Quant is not at all what a 40 means on verbal so I have a slide here that I want to show
that really demonstrates this and this is taken directly from the the GMAC website curved it so
what we can see here is if you look kind of in the middle here that the average score on Quant
is a 40.7 so that's the 50th percentile that means that 50 of students are scoring above 50
percent of good students are scoring below the 50th percentile for verbal is a 27.26 now that
doesn't mean that students are performing worse on verbal uh I think that's the way a lot of people
interpret it is that verbal is the harder section and people are scoring worse that's not what it
means it just means that these scales can be interpreted differently so if we take a look
here for instance at say 41 a 41 for Quant is a 37th percentile so that's um that's a little
bit lower right if we look for verbal we got 41 it's a 94th percentile so that means that's a
very high score for verbal so the takeaway here to go back to this previous slide is that if you
are self-studying if you are building your own study schedule use percentile rankings for those
individual sections to determine how you're performing the raw score is not particularly
helpful from a diagnostic perspective but also for um for you personally so take a look at those
percentiles and then focus on that section where you're performing worse to bring up that score
yeah Eric do you have any thoughts yeah I was just I mean kind of back to my admissions days
um you know you know percentiles are really about how you rank compared to other people that take up
whatever it is that you're being compared to right so in this case these percentiles are simply of
people who take the GMAT score how many of them score uh in that sort of 41 and above let's say
and for that example and then you know on the on the Quant and how many of them do that on
the verbal section so I think what it shows is that you know makes sense more people that are
going to take the GMAT probably have a little bit more comfort level with the Quant section right
because you know when you go to business school there's going to be Quant there's going to be
um you know and just look at the backgrounds of candidates that apply so yeah there's
more innocence competition there from a from a Quant standpoint than from a verbal standpoint
if they're sort of different type of grad program it might be the complete opposite
so yeah now how schools look at that is that they will use both right so they will look at
the total score which is going to be consistent from year to year to year to year to year right
so if they say look we've been able to see the people who have struggled or below a certain
score right the percentile they'll have to adjust over time depending on how the
applicant pool changes or how the the GMAT pool changes right so but we always provide three-year
averages in fact the data that Erica you were showing where obviously three-year averages and
they don't change dramatically from you know year to year obviously but but nevertheless
um it's just important to to put that in the right context right absolutely I have a question
um kind of related to this myth and a piece of advice that I I've given students and that I
I know a lot of other test prep providers give students is to try to aim for a balanced score
for admission so this is getting a little bit into admissions territory so if someone is weaker in
in verbal to ideally try to pull it up a little closer to Quant to someone's weaker and Quant
to ideally try to pull that up a little closer to verbal what what do you think sure I mean that I
mean that's good advice in terms of you know you don't want to have red flags for the school right
um so you know it's the same thing with the subsections like the integrated reasoning
section right which is you know not included in the total score right so if that's you know
really low you know maybe that that sets off a little bit of an alarm Bell but more importantly
when they see higher scores of a particular subsection they kind of go oh we can we can point
to that that might help to offset some of the the lower scores maybe we're seeing in something else
um but every school and every program is going to so maybe emphasize different things with
their admissions committee in terms of what they know about how people have performed on these
kinds of tests and how they do in the program I mean the the GMAT is the most predictive uh
piece of an application in terms of predicting your academic performance right unless you're
coming right out of undergrad and then your grades I think at undergrad and your courses
you took there will be probably equally as predictive but some schools will focus
more on the Quant section right I don't hear as many schools focus on the verbal section
um but but nevertheless um if they see it's it's really low there um you know maybe that has some
thoughts of well how what about their English skills right um and that's where they're going
to read the analytical writing assessment for sure not just for your ability to break down
an argument but also just look at your command of English language right actually reading the
the text um and then obviously if you're not a native speaker you're taking another you're
taking an actual English test which you know the GMAT is not measuring your English skills
right those are there are other tests for that your GMAT journey and your admissions
journey is going to be you know it's going to be school specific it's going to be personal
um so the the generalized advice doesn't always quite work I I tend to recommend that it's it's
typically easier to get questions that are lower difficulty right like it's easier to make those
those lower percentile improvements um than it is to make the the higher percentile ones but again
yeah it is going to be specific if your school is looking for you to demonstrate a quantitative
proficiency that you don't demonstrate anywhere else maybe you should focus on the Quant section
um so yeah I I super appreciate that perspective that you know you want to personalize it to your
exam performance but you also want to personalize it to your personal MBA journey [Music]