A 14 min read

The GMAT Focus Edition, launched on November 7th, 2023, marked a significant evolution in graduate management admission testing. After running parallel with the classic GMAT for three months, it fully replaced the classic format when the latter was discontinued on January 31st, 2024. In August 2024, the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) released its first major percentile update based on actual test-taker data, providing valuable insights into the stability and effectiveness of the new scoring system. This innovative scoring system promises a fairer, more comprehensive assessment of applicants’ abilities. 

If you are planning to take the GMAT, this article offers essential insights into the score chart, percentiles, and the new scoring architecture, incorporating data from both the initial launch and the August 2024 update. It also outlines key exam information to help you prepare for your educational journey. 

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What is the GMAT Score range?

The GMAT Focus Edition maintains a similar number of scoring levels as the classic GMAT but introduces subtle yet important differences. Both tests had 61 scoring levels, offering a comprehensive assessment of candidates’ abilities. However, while the classic GMAT used a range of 200-800, the Focus Edition uses 205-805, allowing for clear differentiation between scores from the two formats. 

	Number of Ability levels	Score Scales
GMAT Focus Edition (current Format)	61	205 – 805
Old GMAT	61	200 – 800

There are three sections in the new GMAT i.e., Quant or Quantitative, Verbal, and Data Insights. You get a scaled score for each of the sections . Here is the table with GMAT score breakdown:

New GMAT Section	Scaled Score	Mean Score
Quantitative score	60 – 90	78.05
Verbal score	60 – 90	79.28
Data Insights	60 – 90	74.89

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How is GMAT scored?

The most important thing you need to understand is that the GMAT is an adaptive test. This means that the difficulty level of questions keeps changing according to your performance. For example, the test might keep increasing the difficulty level of questions if you keep answering them correctly.

But why does the test adjust the difficulty level of questions?

For one simple reason, it wants to assess your ability level. A person who can answer higher difficulty level questions has a high ability level as compared to one who is not able to answer those questions. Therefore, your GMAT score depends on two factors:

1. Number of questions answered correctly
2. The average difficulty level of questions answered correctly

GMAT percentile- How to convert your score into percentile ranking?

Here’s what the GMAC says about GMAT Scores and GMAT percentiles: “GMAT Scores also include a Percentile Ranking. This number indicates the percentage of test-takers that you performed better than.” They further explain that while your score will not change, the Percentile Ranking may as GMAT Percentiles are recalculated every summer using exam data from the prior three years.

Take a look at the table (GMAT Score Chart) below to understand the relation between GMAT Test Scores and GMAT Percentiles.

GMAT Scores & percentiles :

1) Total Score sorted by Percentile Ranking:

Use this GMAT Score Chart (updated August 2024) to understand the corresponding percentile values for total GMAT scores :

2) Quantitative reasoning Score sorted by Percentile Ranking:

Use this GMAT Score Chart (updated August 2024) to understand the corresponding percentile values for GMAT Quant scores :

3) Verbal reasoning Score sorted by Percentile Ranking:

Use this GMAT Score Chart (updated August 2024) to understand the corresponding percentile values for GMAT Verbal scores :

4) Data Insights Score sorted by Percentile Ranking:

Use this GMAT Score Chart (updated August 2024) to understand the corresponding percentile values for GMAT Data Insight scores :

Data Insig

Will the GMAT Focus Percentile change? Read this article to know about it.

Major differences in how the exam is scored

The GMAC has introduced a much-needed overhaul to the GMAT Focus Edition’s scoring system, including an update to the scoring algorithm, adapting it to the increasingly diverse and global test-taking population. Over the years, significant shifts in scores have led to uneven distribution, making it challenging for schools to differentiate candidate performance. The updated score scale addresses this issue, ensuring a more equitable assessment that accurately reflects the evolving composition of the GMAT test-takers. There are two major changes to the scoring architecture.

1. The Total Score is now comprised of all 3 section scores (Quantitative, Verbal, and Data Insights), ensuring a more comprehensive assessment. This is explained in point 2.
2. The scoring scale has evolved and assigns more ability levels to higher scoring levels, making overall scoring more in tune with the current test-taking population.

A notable addition is the introduction of the 100th percentile score—a departure from the classic GMAT where even an 800 mapped to the 99th percentile. Currently, scores above 735 achieve the 100th percentile ranking. 

Evolved scoring scale = More balanced Scoring

The classic GMAT was scored from 200 to 800 in 10-point intervals, providing 61 scoring levels. The GMAT Focus Edition maintains the same number of levels but shifts to a 205-805 range. However, what’s truly significant isn’t the range itself, but how these levels are distributed. 

The original scoring scale for the classic GMAT was designed in the 1990s. With the Focus Edition, the GMAC has taken the opportunity to completely redesign this scoring scale to better align with today’s test-taking population. Here’s how the ability points are distributed across different percentile segments: 

Percentile Segment	Focus Edition	Classic GMAT	Change in Focus	Impact
76-100 percentile	20 points (33%)	14 points (23%)	+6 points	Enhanced differentiation at top levels
51-75 percentile	5 points (8%)	6 points (10%)	-1 point	Similar discrimination
26-50 percentile	6 points (10%)	9 points (15%)	-3 points	Consolidated mid-range
0-25 percentile	30 points (49%)	32 points (52%)	-2 points	Maintained lower-range distinction

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This redistribution represents a significant shift in how candidate abilities are measured and reported. The Focus Edition assigns 20 ability points to the top 25 percentile of test takers—a 40% increase from the classic GMAT’s 14 points. This means that the GMAT Focus edition can do a much more precise assessment of your ability than the classic GMAT. This improvement stems from two major enhancements: 

1. A much-improved Quant scoring architecture
2. A balanced scoring Data Insights scoring architecture.

Another major addition to the GMAT Focus is the inclusion of a 100 percentile score. This is a major change from the classic GMAT, where even a score of 800 mapped to the 99^th percentile. In fact, as per the current scoring table, any score above 735 results in a 100 percentile score.

One of the most significant changes is the introduction of the 100th percentile score—a departure from the classic GMAT where even a perfect 800 only mapped to the 99th percentile. In the Focus Edition, scores above 735 achieve the 100th percentile ranking, providing clear differentiation at the very top of the scale. 

The August 2024 percentile updates have validated this new scoring architecture. The stability observed in these first official updates suggests that the redistributed ability points are effectively capturing and representing candidate capabilities across the scoring spectrum, with particular strength in differentiating among high-performing candidates. 

The extra ability points at the higher percentiles allow for: 

• More precise measurement of top performers’ abilities 

• Better differentiation between very strong candidates 

• More accurate representation of the current test-taking population’s skill distribution 

• Enhanced ability for schools to distinguish between high-performing candidates 

This enhanced granularity at higher percentiles directly addresses a long-standing challenge in graduate management education admissions: the need to better differentiate among top-performing candidates while maintaining appropriate discrimination across the full range of abilities. 

Do these ability levels do much good?

If you look at the score chart below, you will observe that 11 out of the 20 levels are assigned to 100 percentile scorers or 99 percentile scorers, indicating that these expanded levels may not yield many benefits to most high scorers.

While this may mathematically seem true on paper, it ignores two key aspects:

1. This data is built around the stats the GMAC currently has, especially the stats for IR. Since most people currently don’t prepare for IR, those stats are likely to change, which in turn will change the percentiles that these ability levels map to.
2. Even with these IR stats, the GMAC has a conclusive way to distribute the top 25 percentile of test takers into 20 different buckets. The classic GMAT’s scoring architecture only allows 14 such buckets.

We strongly believe that the score chart for the Data Insights section will undergo a considerable change in the near future, allowing many more people to score higher, which in turn would allow more individuals to perform better on GMAT Focus Edition. In other, while a 745 on GMAT Focus today is a 100^th percentile score, it may well become a 99^th or even a 98^th percentile score in the near future.

Revamped Quant Scoring architecture

The classic GMAT’s Quant scoring had exactly 4 ability levels for the top 40% of students. This was despite the fact that the test had 31 questions – or about 50% more questions than the Focus Edition, which has 21 questions. In other words, a student whose ability was estimated to be 90th percentile would get a Q50, the same score as someone at the 85th percentile. Similarly, someone at the 79th percentile was grouped with someone at the 71st percentile since both would be assigned a Q49 score. 

By grouping all of these together, the test did not do justice to test takers. 

Compare this to the Quant scoring table for the Focus Edition. Even though the Focus Edition has 21 questions or about 10 fewer than the classic GMAT had, it assigns 10 ability levels for the top 30 percentile of students – or about 3X as many levels. Moreover, the test now conclusively differentiates between a 95th and a 97th percentile student, assigning them different scores. This granular differentiation has remained remarkably stable even after the August 2024 percentile updates. For instance, a score of 86 shifted only marginally from the 91st to 92nd percentile, and an 80 moved from the 64th to 66th percentile – demonstrating that the Focus Edition’s scoring system maintains its discriminating power while showing expected minor refinements based on larger sample sizes. 

Scaled Score	Percentile
90	100%
89	97%
88	95%
87	94%
86	91%
85	88%
84	85%
83	81%
82	76%
81	70%

Why do we need more granularity for high scorers?

	Classic GMAT	GMAT Focus Edition	Takeaway
90th percentile	1 level	5 levels	1)Better scoring in GMAT Focus  2)GMAT Focus test is harder
80th percentile	1 level	3 levels	1)Better scoring in GMAT Focus  2)GMAT Focus test is harder
70th percentile	1 level	2 levels
60th percentile	1 level	1 level	Similar behavior in both versions
Below 60th percentile	42 levels	20 levels

Overall
GMAT Focus Edition	11 out of 31 levels(60-90) – 60th percentile or more
GMAT classic Edition	4 out of 46 levels(6-51) – 60th percentile or more*

*Refer to the section Evolved scoring scale = More balanced Scoring for more information on ability levels

The table above compares the granularity of the Quant score for GMAT Focus Edition and the classic GMAT. One question that you may ask is – why we need higher granularity for high scorers when clearly it comes at the expense of lower granularity for those with lower percentile.

Let us illustrate this with an example:

Let us take a scoring paradigm in which one percentile = 1000 students. Furthermore, let us take two students, John and Jay.

1. John’s actual ability is 98^th percentile. However, given the limitation of the scoring scale, he is assigned a 96th percentile score.
2. Jay’s actual ability is 72nd percentile. However, given the limitation of the scoring scale, he is assigned a 70^th percentile score.

While the overall error for both John and Jay is two percentile points, which translates to 2000 students, the overall ranking error is very different.

Here is the definition of ranking error = ABS (Assigned rank – Real Rank)/ (100-Rank)

The test tells John that there are 4,000 students who are at the same level or ahead than him. However, in reality, only 2000 students should have been ahead of him. In other words, to the outside world (B-schools), there are twice as many students who are just as good or better than John. Hence, his ranking error is (2000/2000) 100%.

However, for Jay, the test tells that there are 30,000 students who are just as good or better than Jay, whereas the real number is 28,000. In other words, the error percentage of his rank is 2000/28,000 = 1/14 = 7%

So even though the error in ability estimation for both John and Jay was 2 percentage points, the overall ranking error was 15X as high for John as for Jay, making the test much more unfair to John.

Classic (Old) GMAT vs GMAT Focus Edition- Scoring Architecture 

When looking at a GMAT™ Focus Edition Official Score Report, a common question arises: how can we compare candidates with Focus Edition scores to those with scores from the classic GMAT? According to GMAC, due to fundamental changes in both score scales and score distribution, direct comparison of total scores or section scores between the two exam versions is not meaningful. However, percentile information can be used to link and compare exam scores. GMAC provides a Score Concordance Table to facilitate this comparison. 

Here are some observations from the table below: 

1. The mean score for the GMAT Focus Edition is 553.35– much lower than the mean score for the classic GMAT (574.51) 

2. For scores above the 60^th percentile, the GMAT Focus Percentiles are always higher than the corresponding percentiles of the classic GMAT. For scores lower than the 60^th percentile, in pure percentile terms, students score higher on the classic GMAT than on the Focus Edition. 

What are the changes in the Official Score Report for the GMAT Focus Edition?

The GMAT Focus Edition includes new and improved detailed performance insights with your Official Score Report, at no additional cost! 

In addition to your total and section scores and percentile rankings, you’ll get insights by section, question type, and content domain (meaning, a specific area of knowledge), details on your time management, and data on how you performed compared to others that applied to the same program.  

Performance summary charts provide a view into your performance across the entire exam: 

• Performance by Section – provides an overview of your Total Score, section scores, and your percentile ranking for each. 

• Performance by Program & School – shows your Total Score percentile ranking compared to the percentile rankings of test takers who sent their GMAT scores to the same program within the past 5 years. 

Subsection charts provide details about how you performed on specific domains within the Verbal Reasoning, Quantitative Reasoning, and Data Insights sections. It is important to note that not all subdomains are present within each of the three sections. (Please note that if a specific chart is not relevant to a particular section, it will not be provided.) 

• Performance by Content Domain - shows your percentile ranking based on the most recent 5 years of data for each content domain within the individual section. 

• Performance by Question Type - shows your percentile ranking based on the most recent 5 years of data for each question type within the individual section. 

• Performance by Fundamental Skills - shows your percentile ranking based on the most recent 5 years of data for each fundamental skill within the individual section. 

• Time Management & Performance - shows your response time in minutes, including any review time, for each question within the individual section. 

• Summary of Question Review & Changes - shows your review activity for that section, including how much time you spent reviewing and editing questions in the section. 

Accessing Your Official Score Report 

Your Official Score Report is available via your mba.com account typically within 3-5 business days*. You will be notified via email once your Official Score Report is available in your mba.com account (if you do not see the email, check your "junk mail" or "spam" folder). It includes your exam appointment details, some personal data that was provided at registration, individual section scores, Total Score, and percentile rankings. It will also include previous scores from other GMAT exams taken within the past five years (if applicable).  

There is no need to cancel your score for the GMAT Focus Edition. 

Since you are not required to select which business school programs receive your Official Score Report before you take the GMAT Focus Edition, there will never be a need to cancel your score. You only send the scores you want to, and if you do not send your Official Score Report to schools after the exam, they will not be able to see it. It will only remain accessible via your mba.com account for you to view. 

Please note that once you send your score to a program, GMAC cannot undo that action or disable the school's ability to view your score. 

Overall Summary | GMAT Score Chart & Percentile

The GMAT Focus Edition, which replaced the classic GMAT in January 2024, represents a significant evolution in graduate management testing. Three key developments stand out: 

1. Enhanced Score Differentiation: The Focus Edition has fundamentally improved the scoring system, particularly for high performers. By fixing the quant scoring architecture and introducing more granular ability levels at higher percentiles, it provides a more precise assessment of candidate abilities. This is especially evident in the distribution of 20 ability points for the top 25 percentile, compared to the classic GMAT's 14 points. 

2. Scoring Stability: The August 2024 percentile updates, representing the first major data refresh since the test's launch, have demonstrated remarkable stability in the scoring system. Minor shifts, such as the 86Q moving from 91st to 92nd percentile, validate the initial scoring framework while showing expected refinements based on larger sample sizes. 

3. Balanced Section Weighting: By equally weighing all three sections - Data Insights, Quant, and Verbal - the Focus Edition ensures that candidates strong in any area have similar opportunities to achieve high scores, provided they put in the necessary preparation. 

While the Focus Edition's scoring architecture is more complex than its predecessor's, it offers a fairer and more comprehensive assessment of candidates' abilities. The stability observed in the August 2024 updates suggests that this new system effectively serves its intended purpose: providing business schools with more accurate and detailed insights into candidate capabilities while offering test-takers a more equitable assessment of their skills. 

The enhanced Score Report, with its detailed performance insights and comparative analytics, further supports both candidates and admissions committees in making informed decisions. As the test continues to evolve, the foundation laid by this scoring system appears robust and well-suited to meet the needs of today's diverse applicant pool. 

GMAT Focus OFFICIAL prep materials

Official GMAT prep resources, including the Official Guide for GMAT Focus (Official Guide 2023) and full-length practice tests, became available on mba.com on June 6, 2023. In addition, every e-GMATer can access an industry-leading GMAT Focus Course with 1000+ questions and free mock test , and it will help you understand the GMAT focus syllabus better through practice.

Read this article to understand about the GMAT Official Prep content – What is it & How to use it.

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