Hi All,

I think an instructor might be best able to field this question. Basically, I've taken the gmat twice. For my quant score on the first go-around I scored 31, 30% percentile - I know, terrible. But I then retook it and then scored 40, 59% percentile for quant - I know still terrible, but I thought a dramatic improvement.

First, is this considered a pretty significant move up? Or was I so low to begin with, that this move is not that significant?

Second, say I wanted to duplicate my math effort and improve 9 points from my latest score of 40, which would take me to 49. Would this type of movement from (40 to 49) be harder than the movement I made between my first 2 tries (31 to 40)? Or about the same?

Essentially I am asking these questions because I've been studying on my own this whole time and while my score is not where it needs to be, I saw what I thought was significant improvement in the quant section of the gmat, which was encouraging. But I am leaning toward taking a course with MGMAT anyways to get me to the upper 40s in math because I think this move up would be harder. Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Jack

That is a very nice improvement - 30 percentile points is fantastic! Nice work.

In general, the higher you go, the harder it gets (that's probably true of just about everything!). There's just not as much room for error as you get higher. A 49 on quant is around the 88th percentile, which means you'd be scoring better than 88% of all the people who take this test. It's a fantastic score - and it's tough to get there no matter where you start (er... I guess unless you're one of those rare people starting even higher... :)

I'm not going to advise you on whether to continue studying on your own or whether to take a course - I obviously have a major conflict of interest there. But you should feel very encouraged by the progress you've made so far. Keep up the great work!

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Stacey Koprince
Instructor
Director of Online Community
ManhattanGMAT