I am going to start this by giving my father’s GMAT score from 1972:
Verbal: 78th Percentile
Quantitative: 85 Percentile
Overall: 87 Percentile
Obviously, the question is how can you have an overall percentile which is higher than the two scores that comprise it?
Presumably, this has something to do with the definition and use of ‘percentiles’. Would it always be true that your overall GMAT percentile would be at least as high as your highest score, providing that you scored over 50% in both? What equation governs this whole thing?
Interestingly, his score was only 587. Was the GMAT scoring different out of 800 in those days?
Confused…
A percentile doesn’t have anything to do, directly, with what percentage of the questions a person got right; it’s about where they rank compared with the rest of the people who took the test. “78th percentile” refers to a score that’s better than 78 percent of the other scores.
If there were only three people who took the test, and one of them got 100 on verbal and 500 on quantitative (600 overall), and another got 500 on verbal and 100 on quantitative (600 overall), and you got 400 on verbal and 400 on quantitative (800 overall), then your verbal score is better than one other person’s, and so was your quantitative score, but your overall score is better than both of the others, so your overall percentile is higher than your percentile on either verbal or quantitative.