GMAT Strategy

Hi I took practice exam 1 and got a 610, 43 Math 31 Verbal

10 wrong answers on the math and 16 wrong on verbal

I stuied for two weeks mostly on verbal and took practice exam 2

590, 42 Math 29 Verbal
12 wrong answers on the math and 13 wrong on the verbal

Basically I got one wrong less answer in total in practice exam two, but the score came down. How is this possible?

What do you recommend I do? Study more verbal?
If i can bring my scaled verbal score to the 42 or 43 and keep my math scaled score around 42 or 43, what you that translate to in over all score... high 600s???

Looking at total number of wrong answers is not a good way to compare your scores. First, if you look at the individual quant and verbal scores, you got more wrong in math and fewer wrong in verbal the second time. This would indicate that the quant scaled score varies much more (which makes sense since there are fewer questions so one wrong answer will swing the score more than one wrong verbal answer). Also if you look at the percentile scores for the scaled scores, 99%tile in verbal is something like 46+ while 99%tile in math is much higher.

To me, it is not clear how the scaled scores are converted to an actual 200-800 score. However, if you look here (https://www.mba.com/NR/rdonlyres/105C717 ... Sample.pdf) you can target certain percentiles if that works for you. 43 in verbal would but you in the 96%tile. I would definitely spend time working on your verbal as your quant score is pretty good. Depending on how much time you have you could definitely hit both in your studying. I would diagnose your weaknesses in verbal and work to eliminate your problem areas. Then, time permitting, I would do the same for quant.

Good luck!

why did my verbal scale score go down if i got less wrong the second time?