Scoring question on CAT Verbal sections

[johnnypchen]

I took CAT 1 and 2, on the first I had a verbal composite score of 34 (72%), where I got 17 wrong and was seeing a lot of 500-700 level questions because it was my first test. I think I literally got every 700-800 level question wrong. Then I took CAT 2 Verbal, and saw primarily 700-800 level questions where I got 19 wrong and also got a 34 (72%)

I am just trying to understand the scoring here....Apples to apples, the system thought I was the same test taker and deserves the same score even though I was facing much harder questions in the CAT 2 verbal? Is it just because I got 2 more wrong in the second test?

[RonPurewal]

I took CAT 1 and 2, on the first I had a verbal composite score of 34 (72%), where I got 17 wrong and was seeing a lot of 500-700 level questions because it was my first test. I think I literally got every 700-800 level question wrong. Then I took CAT 2 Verbal, and saw primarily 700-800 level questions where I got 19 wrong and also got a 34 (72%)

I am just trying to understand the scoring here....Apples to apples, the system thought I was the same test taker and deserves the same score even though I was facing much harder questions in the CAT 2 verbal? Is it just because I got 2 more wrong in the second test?

hmm.

our algorithms are tailored so that they work very similarly to the real GMAT. if this is the type of result you got from our tests, then it's not unreasonable that a similar result could occur on the real test.

in any case:
* how many of each level of question did you get right/wrong? (especially considering that you did, objectively, get more questions wrong on the second version).
* did you have any long streaks of wrong answers on each test?
any other, more specific info that you could give would be great.

by the way:
remember that you should NEVER be thinking about "difficulty levels" - or about scores AT ALL - while you're taking the actual test.
in fact, there's really not much point at all in trying to understand the nuances of the algorithm, unless you actually write practice tests. a "big picture" understanding is all that's required (in terms of justifying strategy and time management decisions), so try to concentrate more on improving your performance and time management (and, accordingly, less on worrying overly much about difficulty levels, scoring algorithms, etc.)