Is GMAT verbal or quant more important? By focusing on getting a high verbal score, I was able to score above 700 on GMAT twice.
In this article, I’ll share my analysis of GMAT score with you. Through the data, you will see the advantages of prioritizing your performance in the verbal section.
Before we begin, if you want to know more about how difficult it is to get a +700 score on GMAT. I wrote an article explaining how hard is it to get 700 on GMAT. I recommend you read the article for a clear explanation on what it takes to get 700 on GMAT.
Is GMAT Verbal or Quant More Important?
In general, getting a high percentile score in the verbal section leads to a high total score. For 700+ GMAT scores, the total percentile score is closer to the verbal percentile score than it is to the quant percentile score for 94% of the cases. So, GMAT verbal is more important than GMAT quant.
The following figure shows the summary of my analysis:
The colored boxes show all combinations of quant and verbal score that can get you to a 700+ score. The green boxes show the combinations where the verbal percentile score is closer to the total percentile score than the quant percentile score is. The yellow boxes show the combinations where the quant percentile score is closer to the total percentile score than the verbal percentile score is.
From a total of 148 boxes, 9 of them are yellow and 139 of them are green. In other words, in 94% of the cases, the verbal percentile score is closer to the total percentile score than the quant percentile score is.
If you’re interested to know more about the analysis, read on.
Basis for the Analysis
I’ve taken the GMAT three times. Here’s a snapshot of my performance for those three attempts:
| Attempt | Quant | Verbal | Total |
| 1 | 44 | 37 | 650 |
| 2 | 48 | 40 | 710 |
| 3 | 51 | 40 | 750 |
But in this format, the scores won’t make much sense to you. So, let’s convert the scores to their percentile equivalent.
| Attempt | Quant | Verbal | Total |
| 1 | 63 | 81 | 78 |
| 2 | 78 | 90 | 92 |
| 3 | 98 | 90 | 98 |
GMAT updates its percentile scores every year based on the data from the last three years. So, these values may not represent the current percentile scores. But that doesn’t matter because we’re looking at the trends. And the trends haven’t changed in years.
Next, let’s look at how far the quant percentile scores, and the verbal percentile scores are from the total percentile scores.
| Attempt | Quant | Verbal | Total |
| 1 | 15 | -3 | 78 |
| 2 | 14 | 2 | 92 |
| 3 | 0 | 8 | 98 |
From this table, you can see that except for the third attempt, my verbal percentile score is pretty close to my total percentile score.
But I was curious about what happened during the third attempt. Did maxing out my quant percentile score cause the deviation?
To find the answer, I dove deep into GMAT scoring patterns.
Credit to the Source and Process of Analysis
I got the data to do my analysis from Magoosh’s GMAT score calculator. The interactive score calculator is an excellent resource for calculating the quant-verbal split for your target score. I recommend using the tool for your planning.
Here’s a summary of that score chart.
From this table, you can see that there are many quant-verbal splits that can get you a 700+ score. However, to keep the data consistent, I’ve converted all the total scores to the equivalent total percentile score.
Next, I calculated the difference between the total percentile score and the verbal percentile score. I’ve used the absolute value of the difference. I did this because it doesn’t matter whether the verbal percentile score is more than the total percentile score or other way around.
After that, I found the difference between the total percentile score and the quant percentile score. Again, I’ve used the absolute value of the difference.
Finally, I found the difference between the two previous values.
In the table above, a negative value shows that the quant percentile score is closer to the total percentile score than the verbal percentile score is. A positive value shows the opposite.
I colored these boxes so that the patterns are easy to spot. Here’s what the color coding represents:
- Red: Quant percentile score is closer to the total percentile score than the verbal percentile score is. But the quant-verbal pair gives a score less than 700.
- White: Verbal percentile score is closer to the total percentile score than the quant percentile score is. But the quant-verbal pair gives a score less than 700.
- Green: Verbal percentile score is closer to the total percentile score than the quant percentile score is. But the quant-verbal pair gives a score more than or equal to 700.
- Yellow: Quant percentile score is closer to the total percentile score than the verbal percentile score is. But the quant-verbal pair gives a score more than or equal to 700.
I bet you can already see some patterns forming. But things became even clearer when I applied the color coding to percentiles:
From the table, you can see that for most of the cases where the total percentile score is 88 percentile points or more, the verbal percentile score is closer to the total percentile score than the quant percentile score is.
The following table makes this easier to see than the previous one:
So, what does this tell us? Well, it tells us that if you’re looking for a 700+ score on GMAT, you should score at least 76 percentile points in the verbal reasoning section and max out your quantitative reasoning score.
Now, let’s look at the opposite case. What happens when you max out your verbal score? If you score 99 percentile points in the verbal section, you can get a score of 700 even if you score 43 percentile points in the quant section.
For this reason, I always recommend aiming for a score of 40 or more in the verbal section. If you do that, you can get a score of 700 even if you don’t do well in the quant section.
But ideally, you should minimize the difference between your verbal percentile score and the quant percentile score. So, I recommend aiming for a score of 50 in the quantitative reasoning section.
What Next?
Now that you know on which section to concentrate, I recommend reading my article on how to start GMAT preparation from scratch. The article will walk you through everything you need to do to get a 700+ score on GMAT.
If you want tips on how to score more than 700 on GMAT, I recommend these articles:
- How to Prepare for GMAT Verbal (21 Awesome Tips)
- How to Score 51 in GMAT Quant (21 Field-Tested Tips)
- How to Score a 700 on the GMAT (21 Awesome Tips)
Before I leave you, I love helping people committed to scoring 700 or more on GMAT. So, if you need my help with your preparation, you can get in touch via email. My email is ask@graduateexams.com.
I will usually get back to you within a day. Take care… And all the best.
Image Credits
Featured Image – People vector created by pch.vector – www.freepik.com