SECTION 1 SECTION 2 SECTION 4 SECTION 5 SECTION 6 SECTION 7
1.
The GMAT is designed to yield only the reported verbal, quantitative, and total scaled scores. One
should not calculate raw scores or individual test sections and infer specific strengths or weaknesses
from a comparison of the raw scores results by section. There are two reasons for this. First, different
sections have different numbers of questions, and, even if the number were the same of if percentages
were used to make the numbers comparable, the sections might not be equally difficult. For illustrative
purposes only, suppose that one section had 20 items and another had 25. Furthermore, suppose you
received corrected raw scores of 10 on the first and 10 on the second. It would be inappropriate to
conclude that you had equal ability in the two sections because the corrected raw scores were equal, as
you really obtained 50 percent for the first section and only 40 percent for the second. It would be
equally inappropriate, however, to conclude from the percentages that you did better on the first section
than on the second. Suppose the first section was relatively easy for most examinees (say, an average
corrected raw score percentage across examines of 55 percent) and the second was relatively difficult
(an average raw score percentage of 35 percent). Now you might conclude that you did less well than
average on the first section and better than average on the second.
Differences in difficulty level between editions are accounted for in the procedure for converting the
verbal, quantitative, and total corrected raw scores to scaled scores. Since the corrected raw scores for
individual sections are not converted to produce scales scores by section, performance on individual
sections of the test cannot be compared.
Second, corrected raw scores by section ate not converted to scaled scores by section because the
GMAT is not designed to reliably measure specific strengths and weaknesses beyond the general verbal
and quantitative abilities for which separate scaled scores are reported. Reliability is dependent, in part,
on the number of questions in the test- the more questions, the higher the reliability. The relatively few
questions in each section, taken alone, are not sufficient to produce a reliable result for each section (see
“Accuracy of the Scores” in the GMAT Examinee Score Interpretation Guide.) Only the reported
verbal, quantitative, and total scaled scores (which are based on questions from several sections) have