Best Practice Tests?

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Which company makes the best GMAT practice tests (excluding GMATPrep)?

Princeton Review
227
11%
Kaplan
479
24%
Manhattan GMAT
1207
60%
Veritas Prep
45
2%
Other? (Please let us know)
42
2%
 
Total votes: 2000

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by jimmy23 » Thu Mar 06, 2008 10:53 pm
I am new and having much information please reply me which one is best.

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Manhatten practice test question????

by luckybrandy » Wed Mar 19, 2008 8:17 am
I have two quick questions:

First, I was wondering if the Manhattan Computer Adaptive Practice Exams https://www.manhattangmat.com/storeitems ... 81&catid=4, was the practice test be referred to in this poll???


Second, I noticed that the site states that you get the same 6 exams for free if you purchase any one of the Manhattan study guides. Does anyone know if you still get one year unlimited access to these exams if you get them with the purchase of a guide, as opposed to purchased separately?

Thank you in advance :D

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by Leonard C » Wed Apr 09, 2008 4:31 am
I think we should define what we mean by "best". I think if you mean which test will give you a good idea of what score you will get, then in my view it is MGMAT.

However, if by "best" you mean which test has questions which are comparable to the actual GMAT, then I would say Kaplan. I love the MGMAT Sentence Correction book but I did not think much of their test. Their verbal test is good, but their quant test is not very good in my opinion. Questions were too verbose, big focus on combinatorics (which the actual GMAT doesn't focus on), and computationally longer.

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Kaplan practice tests

by robk100 » Wed Apr 09, 2008 6:29 am
I've been scoring very consistently on the Kaplan practice tests so it's scary because I'm not seeing improvement. Always a high score in math and a relatively low score in verbal. Do you guys think Kaplan underestimates the verbal score, math score, or both? Is the verbal a lot harder on Kaplan than on the real GMAT? I hope so..... let me know what you guys think.

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by dubc1982 » Thu Apr 24, 2008 1:01 pm
When you say Manhattan GMAT, which company is it because I've seen two? There's one with blue covered books and one with red covered books.

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by mansihp » Wed Apr 30, 2008 6:16 am
hey,
i've tried Kaplan n Princeton and i found Kaplan q's were slightly tougher...can someone provide me with Manhattan tests please...i tried searching it online but in vain...i m planning to write my test in July 1st week..probably 1st July

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Re: Best Practice Tests?

by mim3 » Sun May 11, 2008 12:24 pm
beatthegmat wrote:I'm very interested in seeing the public opinion...

I might be a little late for this string of posts, but I logged on to search what others thought about the various practice tests. I've been averaging about a 690 on MGMAT, just took the first GMATPrep last week and scored a 710, which I was excited about. However... just now finished a Kaplan exam and scored a 580!!! I'm not putting too much stock into that, but that's quite a difference. Sounds like others have had similar experiences with Kaplan.

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by jmaynardj » Tue Jun 17, 2008 6:39 am
I voted other. I have only experienced the Kaplan and the MBA.com tests and taking the MBA.com test felt like more what an adaptive test would feel like. Does anybody know if the online test that Kaplan gives free with the book is adaptive. It certainly did not feel that way as the questions did not get harder, but varied from hard to easy with each question.

Taking the mba.com test last night I thought I was doing terribly. In fact I ended up getting 25 wrong on the test, which is 15 more than I had gotten wrong on the Kaplan written or online test. But I scored a 700 which was higher than I scored on the Kaplan tests.

Does anybody know if the Princeton or the Manhattan tests are adaptive and good reflections of the actual test? I am at the point where just doing problems is important, but I want to get the real feel of the test and feel that stress that I will feel on test day.

Thanks.

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by chet steadman » Wed Jun 18, 2008 8:25 am
Stacey Koprince wrote:We have done extensive testing of our algorithm (using our students' real scores on the official test) and our current standard deviation on our test is in the low 50s (compared to about 30 for the official test). This doesn't mean that the test is that accurate for everyone, of course, but overall, the algorithm output is fairly close to that of the official test.
SD only tests distance to the mean, though. Do you know whether the results are generally skewed positively?

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by Ian Stewart » Wed Jun 18, 2008 5:10 pm
chet steadman wrote:
Stacey Koprince wrote:We have done extensive testing of our algorithm (using our students' real scores on the official test) and our current standard deviation on our test is in the low 50s (compared to about 30 for the official test). This doesn't mean that the test is that accurate for everyone, of course, but overall, the algorithm output is fairly close to that of the official test.
SD only tests distance to the mean, though. Do you know whether the results are generally skewed positively?
I'm curious about the answer to this-- what is the mean difference between diagnostic test scores and real GMAT scores? -- and also about the methodology behind the comparison. GMAC reports the GMAT test's standard error (not the standard deviation, of course, which is more than 100 points) to be around 30 points. That is not a measurement of how similar one test taker's results will be from one test to the next (the standard deviation of the score change is much higher in that case); it's a measure of how well the GMAT estimates a test taker's 'true' GMAT ability. I would need to be convinced of the justification for a comparison between this and a correlation measure between diagnostic test scores and real test scores; you're measuring different things.

And that's ignoring questions of using a biased estimator (people improve after doing diagnostic tests, so you would not expect identical performance from diagnostic test to real GMAT) and a biased sample (people taking a prep course aimed at those hoping for an elite test score probably aren't representative of the testing pool in general).

I certainly don't mean to dismiss the correlation data presented above; in fact, I applaud Manhattan GMAT for doing the correlation analysis in the first place- I've yet to find another company or organization that does so much. I'm just unconvinced that the '50 standard deviation' can be compared with the 30 standard error of the real GMAT- it's a comparison of different quantities- and because of that, I'm concerned that the above comparison may be misleading. I'd certainly be curious to learn more about the methodology that was used to arrive at the data presented above, and will reserve judgment about the legitimacy of the comparison until I know more.
For online GMAT math tutoring, or to buy my higher-level Quant books and problem sets, contact me at ianstewartgmat at gmail.com

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In order to answer which practice test ist he "best", the person answering would have had to taken the official GMAT AND all the tests listed. Right?

I took Kaplan, MGMAT, and PowerPrep so far.

I'd say Kaplan is the worst. I got 700 on the first one I took (3 months ago), 540 on the second Kaplan test I took about a month ago, then about 640 PowerPrep about three weeks ago, 680 on MGMAT 2 weeks ago, and 720 on the 2nd PowerPrep yesterday. I have not taken Princeton's test, but I liked MGMAT enough that I didn't want to risk wasting my time with the others ones.

I would still recommend using Kaplan's question banks for timing/stamina/and extra practice.

I also took Veritas practice tests. They were okay, but I wasn't totally impressed. The difficulty level of their tests varied greatly. MGMAT was much more consistent.

I am taking my 3rd and final test this Saturday, I hope the 720 I got on the "official" practice (Q48/V41) is a good indication of where I am. I would be happy with anything above 680.

Good luck everyone.

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relentlesspursuito700plus wrote:In order to answer which practice test ist he "best", the person answering would have had to taken the official GMAT AND all the tests listed. Right?

I took Kaplan, MGMAT, and PowerPrep so far.

I'd say Kaplan is the worst. I got 700 on the first one I took (3 months ago), 540 on the second Kaplan test I took about a month ago, then about 640 PowerPrep about three weeks ago, 680 on MGMAT 2 weeks ago, and 720 on the 2nd PowerPrep yesterday. I have not taken Princeton's test, but I liked MGMAT enough that I didn't want to risk wasting my time with the others ones.

I would still recommend using Kaplan's question banks for timing/stamina/and extra practice.

I also took Veritas practice tests. They were okay, but I wasn't totally impressed. The difficulty level of their tests varied greatly. MGMAT was much more consistent.

I am taking my 3rd and final test this Saturday, I hope the 720 I got on the "official" practice (Q48/V41) is a good indication of where I am. I would be happy with anything above 680.

Good luck everyone.
I guess I meant to say GMATprep, not powerprep. I get those two confused.

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MGMAT Moch tests

by shiv » Fri Aug 08, 2008 2:13 am
Hi All,

I regullarly keep on reading all the posts in this forum and gather some very valuable information from here. When i needed to practice some mock CATs i again revered back to my trusted source and i was not disappointed , to say the least :o

Based on the feed back from a number of people on this forum , i purchased MGAT and have given two Tests till now with score of 630 and 680. However i am still not sure how closely it predicts to my actual GMAT score :? Have finished GMAT prep test with score of 680 and 680. can someone please let me know how closely this predicts my actual scoring capability(althiugh i know a lot of factors contribute on how i perform on the D day, it will still be helpful to get some insights from the experience campaigners :) )?

I really find MGMAT very useful due to the explanations offered, although i feel some of their questions are really wordy and time consuming

Thanks,
Shiv

Oh, by the way , i have my exam on 11th August, so any last minute tips will definitely be handy

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Already Have GMATPrep and Kaplan Tests

by iafmaverick » Sun Aug 17, 2008 7:56 am
Should I to purchase Manhattan GMAT tests as well? Or just focus on getting through what I already have?

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by shiv » Mon Aug 18, 2008 12:43 pm
What do you already have?

I would suggest purchasing MGMAT since it gave me some valuable practice and the answer explanation provided by GMAT is also very good

Thanks,
Shiv