![\"perfect](\"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/18\/2020\/02\/mprep-blogimages-wave1-50-1-e1580853080303.png\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
How can you get the elusive Q51 on the GMAT? To start, let\u2019s be clear that this question is mostly a matter of curiosity. You don\u2019t need a 51 on Quant to score a 700 on the GMAT: <\/span>technically, with a perfect Verbal score, you would only need a 36<\/span><\/a>! You don\u2019t need a 51 on Quant to get into HBS: <\/span>the median score last year was 48<\/span><\/a>. You don\u2019t even need a 51 to be a test prep teacher (although if you want to work for MPrep, you do need to be in the 99th percentile)!<\/span><\/p>\n And this is a good thing, because as you\u2019re about to learn, getting a 51 on Quant involves at least a little bit of luck.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n As a GMAT instructor, this is a tough question for me to answer. Not because the answer is complicated, but because the answer is (as dramatic as this sounds) a little dangerous!<\/span><\/p>\n Why? Well, suppose I say that you <\/span>do<\/span><\/i> need to get every Quant question right in order to score a 51. (We\u2019ll see whether that\u2019s actually true in a second). If that\u2019s the case, then we\u2019ve identified one way in which the GMAT is just like any other exam: in order to get a perfect score, you need a perfect performance.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n You\u2019ve spent your entire life taking other exams that worked like that. To get an A+ on a college final, you need to get pretty much every question right. There\u2019s a simple reason for that: on almost all college exams, your score is a measurement of how many questions you got right.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n So, if I say that getting a 51 on Quant means getting every question correct, it\u2019s going to start to sound like the GMAT works the same way. You may be tempted to think that, just like a college exam, the GMAT is <\/span>also<\/span><\/i> trying to measure the number of questions you get right.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n At this point, I\u2019d recommend that you pause and take a look at <\/span>this very interesting analysis from GMAT With CJ<\/span><\/a>. In addition to the insightful commentary, CJ provides some data from his students\u2019 score reports, comparing the number of incorrect answers to the final Quant score. What I found really striking was that <\/span>almost everyone who scored between a 32 and a 48 got 10 or 11 questions wrong.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n That\u2019s more or less <\/span>what Manhattan Prep came up with when we analyzed our own practice tests<\/span><\/a>, which are based on Item Response Theory principles in the same way that the official GMAT is. (The number of incorrect answers on our practice tests is just a bit higher, because we don\u2019t have experimental questions, which CJ excluded from his analysis of the real test.) <\/span>Almost everybody misses almost the same number of questions<\/b>, whether they\u2019re getting a fantastic score or a so-so one.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In other words, the GMAT <\/span>isn\u2019t<\/span><\/i> trying to measure how many questions you get right. And it <\/span>doesn\u2019t<\/span><\/i> work the same way as a college exam.<\/span><\/p>\n But to get a 51 on Quant\u2026drumroll…yeah, you need to get basically every question right.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Do you see why I hesitated to answer that question? You need to get pretty much every question right if you\u2019re going to score a 51. But, because of the curious way that the GMAT\u2019s scoring algorithm works, that <\/span>doesn\u2019t<\/span><\/i> mean that more right answers = better.<\/span><\/p>\n In order to calculate your score on Quant, the GMAT\u2019s scoring algorithm goes through a process with a goal in mind. Its goal is to determine your \u201cpersonal difficulty level\u201d: the level of difficulty where you can sometimes, but not always, get questions right.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In order to do that, it keeps an eye on how well you\u2019re doing at each point in the test. If you\u2019re getting a lot of questions right, it amps up the difficulty. If you\u2019re getting a lot of questions wrong, it tones things down. By making these fine adjustments, the test eventually settles on a level that reflects exactly how good you are at answering Quant questions (assuming you take the test correctly\u2014for instance, you don\u2019t rush or run out of time).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Suppose you\u2019re at the very, very top of the scale and you can handle super-tough Quant questions. The GMAT will start out by giving you medium-level questions, just like it does for everyone else. You\u2019ll get those questions right. Then, the test will give you harder questions. You\u2019ll get those right too. It\u2019ll eventually start giving you the very hardest questions it has. Surprise: you\u2019ll get those ones right as well. <\/span>But then, the GMAT runs out of difficulty levels.<\/b> If it had even harder questions to give you, you\u2019d probably start missing them eventually, and in the long run, you\u2019d end up missing about as many questions as everyone else! But there aren\u2019t any harder questions. In a way, if you\u2019re scoring a 50 or 51, it\u2019s because the GMAT isn\u2019t hard enough to accurately assess you.<\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s fine, by the way. If you\u2019re scoring a 51 on Quant, your quantitative skills are probably more than strong enough to handle everything that business school might throw at you. There\u2019s no point in designing a test that can tell the difference between a 51 scorer who\u2019s just barely hanging on, and a 51 scorer who could go all the way up to 60 (if 60-level questions existed). Plus, the GMAT would probably have to be a lot longer to do that, and who wants that?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n So, that\u2019s why a score of 51 on Quant corresponds to few, or no, wrong answers. It\u2019s not because the test cares how many answers you get right. It\u2019s because, once you\u2019re at that level, the GMAT is pretty much throwing up its hands and declaring defeat: \u201cfine, you\u2019re so great at Quant that we can\u2019t measure you with this test\u201d! <\/span>If you score a 51 on Quant, congratulations: you broke the GMAT.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n If you\u2019ve read this far, you understand what it means to get a \u201cperfect\u201d score on the GMAT, and why you need to get almost every question right to make that happen. We\u2019re now asking a slightly different question: what does it take to get almost every Quant question right on the GMAT?<\/span><\/p>\n I could go into the skills involved at length, but instead, I\u2019ll send you to <\/span>this fantastic article from GMAT instructor Patrick Tyrell<\/span><\/a>, who already did the work for me. He breaks it down into four skills: automaticity; use of alternate strategies; timing; and exposure. None of those skills is easy to develop, and given that a 51 score is more of a curiosity than a necessity, it\u2019s probably not worth the work it may take to get there. But if you\u2019re on the road to a 51, and you\u2019re feeling inspired, click that link to Patrick\u2019s article and start working on your study plan.<\/span><\/p>\n KEEP READING: <\/strong>Quick GMAT Math Hacks<\/a><\/p>\n You can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GMAT courses absolutely free! We\u2019re not kidding. <\/i><\/b>Check out our upcoming courses here<\/i><\/b><\/a>.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n How can you get the elusive Q51 on the GMAT? To start, let\u2019s be clear that this question is mostly a matter of curiosity. You don\u2019t need a 51 on Quant to score a 700 on the GMAT: technically, with a perfect Verbal score, you would only need a 36! You don\u2019t need a 51 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52871],"tags":[233,283,319,57452,329],"yst_prominent_words":[57437,57436,57440,53635,57444,57439,57443,57441,57438,54088,57451,54076,54561,55502,53840,54070,54600,53640,57442],"class_list":["post-18594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gmat-strategies","tag-gmat","tag-gmat-math","tag-gmat-quant","tag-gmat-quantitative","tag-gmat-score"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/127"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18594"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18599,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18594\/revisions\/18599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18594"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=18594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Do you need to get every question right?<\/b><\/h3>\n
A perfect (or almost perfect) Quant score is an exception to the rule<\/b><\/h3>\n
Sounds great! Now, how do I get a perfect GMAT Quant Score?<\/b><\/h3>\n
\n![\"Chelsey](\"https:\/\/cdn2.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/19\/2015\/11\/chelsey-cooley-150x150.jpg\" "\\"Chelsey")
<\/a>Chelsey Cooley<\/a>\u00a0is a Manhattan Prep instructor based in Seattle, Washington.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/em><\/i><\/b>Chelsey always followed her heart when it came to her education. Luckily, her heart led her straight to the perfect background for GMAT and GRE teaching: she has undergraduate degrees in mathematics and history, a master\u2019s degree in linguistics, a 790 on the GMAT, and a perfect 170Q\/170V on the GRE. Check out Chelsey\u2019s upcoming GMAT prep offerings here<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/em><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"